


All that remains

by AuntyAgonee



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Bones in a back pack, Haunting, Humanstuck, Mentions of Cancer, Mentions of Suicide, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 17:25:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 38
Words: 101,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1866183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuntyAgonee/pseuds/AuntyAgonee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I didn't ask for this. He didn't either. I hate his guts and I'm pretty sure he, 'he' referring to the ghost of the long-dead teenager bound to haunt me until I put him to rest, hates me too. Now I'm stuck investigating an unsolved murder that happened almost 17 years ago and I'm running out of excuses to explain my weird behavior to the friends who aren't already sick of me, and a sudden onslaught of paranormal activity in the house to my father. As if this wasn't bad enough, a pack of malicious entities have taken an interest in us and seem to want to devour our souls.<br/>This is going to be a difficult year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All that remains is in the basement

**Author's Note:**

> This story is loosely inspired by the award winning graphic novel 'Anya's ghost' by Vera Brosgol, which I recommend to everyone. I suppose the only other thing to say is that like most of my work, the relationships are going to be slow-growing and I don't want to ruin the 'surprises' by putting up the relationships in the tags. This is gonna be a weird story, so bear with and if you can, enjoy it.

The street I live on is composed of fourteen houses, with seven on either side. I can easily understand why Pa picked this street as a suitable environment to raise his two children, what with the proximity of the best private school in the state and the excellent selection of pleasant parks where he could walk the dog and the kids respectively, and the stretch of quaint stores nearby for his shopping convenience. Our street is leafy and clean. As far as I can tell there are no wife-beaters or pedophiles living near to us, although the teenage girl who belongs to the family in number 17 looks a more than a little bit like she dabbles in the darker side of the drug world. This kind of town is a nice place to live and build a family – or re-build in our case.  
While I have never questioned Pa’s choice of street or town, I have certainly doubted his choice of house multiple times. Our house is huge owing to Pa’s overlarge salary. My bedroom is one of seven in addition to two bathrooms, a living room, a front room, a kitchen, a study and a spacious attic. There’s also the basement.   
I have lived in this house since I was four years old and this house has always been full of stuff I cannot logically explain. The cold-spot by the bookshelf in the living room is not caused by a draft, nor are the creaks I can hear in a pattern exactly like footsteps at night due to the ‘house settling’ as Pa has reassured me so many times. Objects fall from shelves for no reason, doors are open which were shut earlier, windows are shut which were open earlier and there is sometimes even a dark shape at the top of the staircase, or tucked into some similar place. One night I woke up to the sound of a person falling down the stairs, and when I rushed to the landing to help, I found Pa standing there in confusion, the dog barking like crazy at his side. To this day he maintains it wasn't a prank and so do I, but neither of us is quite sure if we believe the other.  
I suppose this kind of stuff might have driven a lesser man crazy, but my father has already been through enough hell that a few weird noises in the middle of the night don’t bother him. Since I've been living in this house for almost the entirety of my life I’m used to ‘the house settling’.   
I thought I was at least. I sure wasn't prepared for what was waiting for me in the basement. Then again I don’t think what was waiting in the basement was prepared for me at all either.  
That’s where I’m headed at the moment.

“Be careful down there!” Pa calls from the front hallway “Take your phone, yeah? If you fall down the stairs and break your neck while I’m out I want you to be able to call for help!”  
“Go away Pa!” I call back.  
He laughs and with his customary “Love you lad!” he slams the door shut and is gone.  
I stay exactly where he left me ten minutes ago; standing at the top of the maw of the basement staircase, my hand white on the banister, my foot half-hanging off the first step. Blood roars in my ears and I peer into the darkness queasily. I cannot quite persuade myself to step into the basement, although the window at the top of the left wall ensures the place isn't entirely without light. Pa has had me come down here with him numerous times to help him carry a box upstairs or bring something downstairs. He sometimes sends me down on my own. When I was younger Cronus and I played here without fear, making believe the boiler was a hideous monster and we were the brave knights defeating it from our fort of boxes.  
But Pa is at work, Cronus has been at university two cities over for the last year and I have only the dog for company. Captain Ahab is a great companion and an accomplished fetcher and that is it. She is not a guard dog or a ferocious animal. If I did fall down the stairs and break something she would probably bring me her favorite toy to cheer me up. Those stories you hear in the news about a faithful animal rousing the neighbors to save an imperiled owner? That is not Ahab. She’s a sweet dog, but by all things holy is she stupid. Her company is of minimal comfort when I face the basement on my own.  
“Get dow-wn there you useless cow-ward.” I try goading myself and it doesn’t work. “Oh for God’s sake it’s only ten steps.”  
Strangely I’d almost rather be at school today, in spite of the generous assortment of irritating students and haughty teachers and boring lessons. Seems like a walk in the park compared to going down the basement stairs right now.   
“Quit ov-verreacting you dumbass,” I snap “Just get dow-wn there, do the damned job then you can go on the mov-vie marathon you planned.”  
A part of me wants to giggle at myself. When I get scared, Pa’s Irish brogue creeps into my own words. The more afraid I am the thicker it gets. Right now I sound like I just stepped off the latest Aer Lingus flight from Dublin. What finally coaxes me into the basement is a glance at my watch: it’s already 9:10 and I plan to waste the entire day off in front of the TV ploughing through the top five horror classics, from my perspective at least, and every second I have to spend in the basement is a waste of precious vegetation time.  
“W-wish me luck Ahab!” I shout.  
The dog hears her name and barks in response. She bounds into the hallway and slides on the carpet, bouncing off the wall right into the other one and continuing down the hall in a similar ping-pong fashion until she is at my heels.   
I grope for the light switch on the wall and pass through a cobweb, which makes me gag. Fluorescent light throws the piles of boxes and loose junk into the sharp relief, creating climbing shadows. My family has owned this house for a total of twelve years and in that twelve years Pa has thrown everything he had no immediate use for into the basement, since it’s more accessible than the attic. The particular junk I am in here to retrieve are buried deep under years of old furniture, discarded toys and clothes, some of Pa’s old stuff, lots of Cronus’s stuff we’re holding on for him until he gets out of the student dorms and so on and so forth.  
“Bloody hell Pa,” I mutter, weaving my way through drifts of old things “Nev-ver heard of a charity shop?”  
Ahab loves the basement. She can’t quite figure out how to nose the door open even when it’s ajar and tends to take the stairs too quickly and ends up sliding down on her furry butt. Once inside it’s a rather horrifying game of sniff-and-stalk where the human player is aware there’s a slobbery animal lost amid the piles of basement stuff, betrayed by the panting which will draw alarmingly close then go silent, then reappear inches behind the poor victim before Ahab leaps on them and drools all over their face. I imagine it’s what primitive humans must have felt when they were hunched in the long grass with a saber-toothed tiger on their trail.  
Sure enough the moment I have let go of Ahab’s collar, she bounds off into the heaps, her trail marked out by occasional bumps as she plays with her typical grace. What I want is towards the back of the basement in a corner, probably crushed at the bottom. I wade to the back, cursing frequently as I catch my side and bare feet on the edges of sharp things. I can see Ahab’s black tail flick up between the crests of piles of junk, coasting like a shark’s fin before it dips beneath the surface again. This scares me a little more than I want to admit, so I force myself to ignore her, pressing on until I finally get to the back. Stepping over what looks like the stem of a lamp, I put my back to the wall and peer into the corner nearest to me.  
At the very bottom of a tower of cardboard boxes, there’s a dingy black suitcase tucked into the corner. I duck under a ladder and heft the top of the tower off, balancing it on a lower pile and remove the tower, box-by-box until the suitcase has been freed. Part of me wonders why Pa remembers what he shoved her rubbish into and another part of me is mad at him for thinking about her enough to remember.  
The suitcase belonged to Pa, but the stuff inside belonged to my mother. I grab the handle of the suitcase and pull it up roughly. The sudden shift of weight pushes me off my feet and I shoulder the wall hard. Really, really hard. Hard enough to shake the ladder above my head, which begins to tip over. I look up at it with a sort of helpless hope that it won’t fall on my head, then shut my eyes and wait for the pain.  
Luckily for me the ladder smacks into the wall a good foot above my head. I get away with nothing more than a liberal dust-shower. Coughing, I wave my free hand in front of my face. I manage to clear my eyes in time to spy a pair of delighted brown eyes peeping at me from the gap between the shelves of a bookshelf, just before she springs. Ahab’s tongue shoots out and slaps me across the cheeks and forehead. I make a noise of terror in the back of my throat and wriggle away. My head slides against the back of the solid wall and quite suddenly has fallen into a cavity.   
My first thought is that the ladder punched a hole in the wall and Pa will want to damage me just as badly. My second thought is that my head is right beside another skull.

Another skull. I stare at the other skull and think about how I should react. Should I flinch away? Should I scream? I should probably at least stop the dog from licking me. I still have the fucking suitcase in my hand. My mind has already sorted my priorities. I promised Pa I would dig out her junk, and I have it in my hands, so I decide to drop this off upstairs before I do anything else.  
“Get off Ahab.” I shoo her away and step out of the lamp-ladder trap, pulling the suitcase along laboriously. With some effort I manage to deposit it at the top of the stairs, then I stop and sit down for a minute to allow my heart rate to slow down. I squint at the skull to make sure I haven’t had a hallucination brought on by the nasty knock I just took.   
It’s definitely there, a dingy object, sitting in a shelf in the brick which was previously covered up by the same material so it looked to be a part of the wall. The bricks have been cracked and pushed into the cavity by the ladder. Examining the cavity closer, I can see that the skull rests on top of a bundle.  
For some reason my heart isn’t thumping wildly like it should be. Maybe all those violent horror films desensitised me to the real thing? Perhaps I’ll have a delayed reaction to my discovery later –not that I know this stuff is real. Cronus probably planted it before he left last time he visited, which would have been Christmas I definitely know he came into the basement to check on his things.  
“Come on Ahab.”   
As I draw closer to the skull and its bundle, I rationalize the situation. Of course the skull is a prank- if it belonged to an actual rotting body, Cronus and I would have noticed a stench in the basement while we played. There is no way any part of the human body can rot or sicken without odor and if the skull is real it would have not gone unnoticed. Therefore it isn't real and Cronus is going to get an earful when he calls this week.  
And yet I am not convinced. With a sickening jolt I think about the cold spot near the bookshelf and the phantom noises and a ridiculous urge to scream “GHOST!!” and bolt out of the house seizes me, which I ignore. I've never been one to fall for all that paranormal malarkey, even though I live in what I guess could be described as a haunted house if I am generous. I have always figured if I don’t believe in magic then there’s no reason for me to believe in ghosts.  
Even with these reassurances in my head, my hand still shakes when I give the skull a gentle prod. Half-expecting it to crumble under my finger, I shudder at the solid, oddly smooth surface and swallow a lump in my throat. Ahab barks excitedly and puts her paws on the wall, sniffing at the bundle eagerly. Taking the edge of the bundle, I rub the material between my fingers and drop it in repulsion. The bundle is a slippery fabric and for a scary second I think it is slippery with blood or some similar ghostly substance. But it’s a jacket. A thick hooded waterproof folded tightly about a hard bundle.   
“Lemme guess, a full skeleton. You’re a full skeleton, aren’t you? Elaborate Cronus, v-very elaborate.” Ahab’s nose brushes over the top of the jacket. I’ve never seen the jacket before, so Cronus probably bought it wherever he bought the fake skull and skeleton.  
I bite my lip. I pinch the collar of the jacket and peel it away to reveal a jumble of dirty grey bones, arranged as if the body they had belonged to was in fetal position when it was tucked away here to rot. I picture Cronus sneaking a model skeleton out of the Biology lecture hall in pieces stuffed under this jacket and I have to giggle again. Maybe I’ll call him early to congratulate him on his expert pranking, but for now I should cover this hole or Pa may find the prank on his own- and discover the basement walls have been mauled not once, but twice by his malicious sons.  
Ahab is reluctant to leave the fake bones and I have to take her by the collar and tug her gently before she’ll leave.  
“They’re not real and you can’t chew on them.” I tell her firmly.  
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Rashes of goose-bumps shoot along both arms. My head starts to buzz, the roar of the blood rising to a deafening volume. Nausea overwhelms me and I lower myself to my knees to avoid cracking my head open when I fall. Resting my head on the staircase, I tuck my knees into my chest and will the dizziness to go away. Through the gap between my arms I can see Ahab panting contentedly as she waits for me to stand up and over her head, the shelf and the bones.   
The bundle shudders. Something small grips the top of the shelf. I have to stare at it for a few seconds to realize I am looking at the tips of the fingers of a hand, reaching out from the inside of the shelf. Another hand appears on the bottom of the shelf and the fingers squeeze, as if finding a purchase in the brick. The first hand I spotted slides out of the darkness, bringing with it a wrist the color of coffee which it plants firmly against the wall, as if using it for leverage.  
I have seen enough. I force myself to stand and stagger up the staircase, the dog at my heels and the bones at my back. When I reach the top of the stairs I slam the door shut and pretend I haven't heard the slap of feet landing on the floor, than I grab Ahab’s leash, my shoe and my keys and leave the house.


	2. All that remains brought a storm with it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn't ask for this. He didn't either. I hate his guts and I'm pretty sure he, 'he' referring to the ghost of the long-dead teenager bound to haunt me until I put him to rest, hates me too. Now I'm stuck investigating an unsolved murder that happened almost 17 years ago and I'm running out of excuses to explain my weird behavior to the friends who aren't already sick of me, and a sudden onslaught of paranormal activity in the house to my father. As if this wasn't bad enough, a pack of malicious entities have taken an interest in us and seem to want to devour our souls.  
> This is going to be a difficult year.

Three blocks later, I realise I forgot to take my jacket. Heavy clouds hang in the sky overhead, promising a deluge I’ll be defenseless against if trapped outside. I didn’t think to take my wallet either when I ran out of the house - and considering the circumstances which compelled me to run out of there like the devil was chasing me, I’d be concerned about my mental health if I had taken the time to retrieve my wallet. On the downside it means I can’t wander into a café or a bookstore to process what just happened and shelter from the coming rain. The shop keeps around here are, as a rule, charming people, however all of them follow a general rule of ‘if you came in you’re buying something sucker’. Without my wallet (notorious in the neighborhood for being rather fat) I am effectively banned from the shops.  
My shorts-sleeved shirt is getting a few concerned glances from mothers behind strollers. Afraid one of them will try to ask me what’s wrong, I do my best to look unaffected by the cold and put on what Cronus calls my ‘business face’. On especially bad days, the ‘business face’ has caused people to cross the street without first checking for traffic.  
Since I have Ahab with me, I figure I should give her her daily walk in our preferred park. Really I’m just searching for reasons to stay out, some pieces of my routine to swallow me up and let me forget what I just saw and that eventually I’m going to have to go back home and pretend there is nothing to be scared of if I don’t want to be committed. I do my best to lose myself in the walk. Every time a cold wind slices by I am reminded of the lack of jacket and the reason I haven’t got one and I walk a little faster.

What just happened is one of several possibilities.  
1) What I saw was caused by a combination of the knock I took to the head and the discomfort I already felt by being in the basement  
2) Cronus planted a fake skeleton and I was so taken aback by it I got carried away and imagined what I saw  
3) All the sources of stress (and there are more than usual this year) in my life combined in one crazy moment in the basement and manifested in the form of a creature I pictured climbing out of the room in the house I hate the most to get me  
4) I am going crazy  
5) Pa’s cancer is hereditary, his breast cancer mutated into a brain tumor and is causing me to see things which aren’t there  
By the time we reach the park, a fine mist of raindrops has begun to fall, the type you can walk in for a few minutes without realising you’re soaked. The park is emptying of the parents with young children and other dog-walkers and joggers. Up ahead, I see the gazebo where the bands practice and rush to it. Under normal circumstances I would avoid this damned places at all costs. Today is not a day for normal circumstances.  
Ahab shakes herself off and spatters me with water. I’m already soaked to the point where water drips from my hair and my shirt clings to my skin. Warmth rushes from my fingers and toes, and I start to shiver so hard my teeth chatter. The seating is too close to the open walls of the gazebo to sit on and are already glistening and wet. Biting my lip, I sit on the floor towards the centre. The dog settles with her head in my lap, her tail thumping the floorboards and flicking my knee with water each time. The rain lashes outside. The landscape is lost in driving sheets of grey rain, the trees and the path reduced to blurry outlines. Rain drums on the roof overhead. I’m alone.  
“So, what now Ahab?” I scratch her under her shaggy chin “Any suggestions?”  
She blinks at me, content to sit in my lap, drenched and oblivious. I stare back at her. In the animal world, humans are basically nature’s joke with our limited hearing range, blunt teeth and poor eyesight. Animals like dogs are supposed to be able to sense things we humans miss with our stunted faculties. Captain Ahab barks at most things that move, from squirrels in the yard which she has never once caught to plastic bags in the wind which she has never caught either. Science can easily explain why we humans don’t believe in ghosts: because we can’t hear them, see them or smell whatever subtle scents they may exude, due to our thresholds. What we humans can’t see we won’t believe, like disputing the existence of bacteria so strongly back when their existence was postulated by an imaginative scientist. Doctors gladly accepted the idea of bacteria once it had been proved with physical and visual evidence.  
Humans are like that. In spite of our religions, we, by nature, are not creatures of faith. We need to have evidence waved under our nose before we believe something, or to have a good cause to believe what we are told. Personally, I haven’t been easy to convince of anything for a long time. I’m a proud sceptic and I see no reason to start changing my whole perception of the world because of a few fingers I possibly saw in the basement. No need, no reason and no desire to put my faith in the paranormal, the supernatural, magic even, not again.  
God I hate the rain. Why don’t these clouds blow to a place they’re welcomed, like Ethiopia? This town has sprinklers and hosepipes galore, we’re fine. On the bright side the downpour is so heavy the clouds should run out of rain soon, at least peter out to a drizzle light enough to brave. Home is only a few blocks away.  
Ahab and I spend the next ten minutes shivering together, the beat of the rain the only voice. Voices in the distance finally break the silence and I watch two figures emerge from the grey rain. At first it seems like they may pass the gazebo in favour of the path that leads out of the park, but the smaller figure heads towards me and the larger follows. I recognise both of them without seeing their faces. Karkat is the only person I know who’s so creative with his swearing (I can hear “…angel piss, that’s what this is, a putrid haze of angel piss…”) and Sol is unmistakable with his bright red hoodie, although it is under a jacket I can still see its neon hood over his head, and his stick-legs wrapped in ragged skinny jeans. My lip curls, an involuntary reaction to Sol these days.  
“Eridan!” barks Karkat “Are you so cold-blooded you can parade in this biblical deluge without so much as a scarf? The scarf even! Where is the scarf? You’re under-dressed.”  
“He’s wearing his dog.” mutters Sol. He trails a few feet behind Karkat, making a show of regretting every step bringing him close to me. “Dragging your dog out in this weather is like animal torture.”  
Karkat marches up the steps and stands over me, contempt in his face “What are you doing? What is this going to accomplish, languishing in the rain and drowning in melancholy? You’re going to catch a cold you dumb butt-muncher and then you’ll spread it across the school like a diseased monkey. Twenty eight days from this very moment the school will be full of snot-clogged uniformed zombies because you’re too damned fashionable for a plebeian jacket.”  
“Has it occurred to you I forgot my jacket?” I snap at him.  
“Oh. That’s dumb.” He shakes his head and showers me, then sits beside me. The dog lifts her head and scoots to Karkat on her stomach. Ahab treats Karkat with a sort of affection she usually reserves for members of my family and her favourite squeaky bone. Whenever Karkat comes over, she will follow him doggedly (heh heh) and scramble into his lap every time he sits down. She tends to engulf Karkat when she does this, as Karkat isn’t much bigger than the average-sized 12 year old.  
Pulling off his hood, Karkat gives his hair a shake and flicks me with yet more rain. Sol has elected to remain standing at the front of the gazebo with the rain sluicing off his hideous coat. Had our situations been reversed, I would have gladly stood outside instead of sharing a space with him, downpour or no.  
Karkat peers at me carefully “Eridan, what is wrong with you?”  
“Specifically, today.” adds Sol under his breath.  
I ignore him “Nothing. W-why? Am I giv-ving the impression I hav-ve something w-wrong w-with me?”  
“All the time.” Sol hunches his shoulders and stares in the other direction.  
Shrugging, Karkat puts the back of his hand against my forehead “Are you coming down with something? You’re as pale as me.”  
That’s saying something considering Karkat is an albino, hair white as snow and eyes as red as the rose and he burns redder than a boiled lobster when he spends more than fifteen minutes in the sun unprotected.  
I shrug too “I don’t know-w. Maybe.” Then I look pointedly at Sol, who remains silent because even he can’t fashion an insult from the scant material I have given him.  
Karkat isn’t satisfied “Sollux. Give me your hoodie.”  
“Hoodie?” repeats Sol.  
“That awful thing that makes you look like a semi-sentient banana. Yes. ‘Hoodie’.”  
Sol glances from me to Karkat with a growing horror, realising what use Karkat intends to put the hoodie to “No. Never. He’ll make it smell like the perfume department in Target.”  
I shake my head vigorously “I don’t w-want to w-wear anything his greasy epidermis has scraped!”  
Excited by the enthusiasm, Ahab hops up and starts to chase her tail.  
Karkat extends a hand “Sollux. Give me your banana peel this fucking instant before Eridan succumbs to hypothermia.”  
“I should be so lucky!” replies Sol hotly, but he unzips his jacket and wriggles out of the hoodie quickly. He doesn’t come into the gazebo to shelter either, he just strips off in the rain and crams his lanky body back into his slicker.  
Our eyes meet. If he were anyone else I might find his weird mismatched eyes unusual and attractive, but in Sol’s head his eyes just look to me a pair of 3-D glasses got lodged in his eye sockets through some unfortunate and probably hilarious accident. He glares and I mouth the filthiest curse at him I can think of. Rolling his eyes, Karkat accepts the hoodie and pulls it over my head as if I’m a child with no clue how to dress himself. I let him and grumble while he coaxes my arms through the sleeves.  
“It smells like nerd.” actually the hoodie smells like the pine tree he probably stumbled into.  
“It’s going to smell like ego and cologne now.” he snarls back.  
“It will smell like the detergent I’m sure Eridan will be kind enough to wash your hoodie before he returns it tomorrow.”  
Sol and I could exchange insults all day, but Ahab is so excited by the fighting she has become a spinning loop of black and Karkat is in one of those moods where he’d rather murder the both of us than deal with our shit today, so I purse my lips. I have to settle for flinging a filthy gesture at Sol when Karkat turns his back.  
“What are you doing out here Eridan?” asks Karkat eventually.  
There’s really nothing I can say that will make sense to him. Then again most of my friends are used to what I say making very little sense “I found a set of fake bones in my basement. I whacked my head really hard on the wall and gave myself a fantastical episode where I thought there was a ghost climbing out of the basement wall. I think it was a Mexican ghost? I don’t know he had a nice skin colour, a bit like coffee or caramel. I do think it was a man since he didn’t really have slim or womanly fingers –”  
“I’m done with him.” announces Sol. Turning on his heel, he stalks off into the grey rain and is lost within seconds. His voice drifts out of the haze “If you’re staying with him then I’ll say bye now.”  
“Just wait, you numb-nutted server-humper!” shouts Karkat.  
He claps me on the shoulder and bites his lip like he wants to say something important, but he shrugs and parts with a “Don’t stay out too long. Don’t let Captain Ahab wander into the street.”  
Then he runs after Sol.  
I start to wave after him but catch myself in the middle of the pathetic gesture and pretend I am scratching my neck, although there’s no one around to witness my embarrassment. Except for the dog. The dog doesn’t know human emotions like embarrassment. Tugging the hoodie around me snugly makes a bit of a difference against the cold, like pulling on a second skin. Water still drips from me hair and my breath steams in the air and Ahab steals my body warmth greedily, but I’m just a little bit warmer. I tuck my knees into my chest and wait for the storm to pass.

No matter how much I tell myself there is nothing waiting for me at home, when I stand on the sidewalk in front of the house I know, I just fucking know I’m about to re-evaluate my priorities and perceptions because the moment I get in there an unholy terror will spring at me from the shadows and spew ectoplasm down the front of this borrowed hoodie, which I’m going to have to spend the rest of the day scrubbing with multiple brands of bleach and detergent and still end up returning to Sol with a run of black spectre- vomit stain.  
The door isn’t ajar and there are no shapes in the windows but I know that fucker lies in wait. The laws of science and logic which have bound my way of thinking have fled laughing at my confusion. What do I have here to defend myself? Ahab is going to be about as useful as a damp sponge against a fire. Various works of fiction tell me iron and salt work wonders against ghosts. I have neither within reach unless I want to pull up one of the bars of the wrought fence, and if I did that Pa would annihilate whatever the basement-monster leaves for him.  
It’s just my house. My house with the two wings and the sort of tower-ey thingie between them, the big windows and the green door with the knocker that came right out of A Christmas Carol where my big brother, my father, my blooming thick dog and I live.  
And I still throw a stick at the door and to send Ahab out for bait. She smacks into the door in the process of retrieving the stick. No drooling horror clambers out of the mail slot for her blood. I’m safe…probably. Well the fact that a monster won’t go for a dog isn’t a guarantee that it won’t jump on me, an irresistible specimen of the human race. Oh whatever. I can’t wait here until Pa comes home. Sending in a cancer survivor as ghost-bait is way more despicable than using a dog.  
Clenching my hands into fists, I march up to the door and jam my keys into the lock and push the heavy door open.  
The hallway is not dark. Of course not; I left the lights ablaze in my haste to get out. The basement door gapes at the end of the hall. There is not a figure in the doorway. The skeleton is not slumped on the landing with a bony hand outstretched, where I half-expected it to be. I check the ceiling for ghouls crouching on the lights, than poke my head around a few doors in an act of unparalleled courage. Ahab pads fearlessly to her bed in the kitchen and settles down for a nap.  
I throw my hands up “RIGHT IF THERE’S A DEAD PERSON KNOCKING ABOUT, AND ASSUMING YOU CAN UNDERSTAND MY ACCENT, COULD YOU LEAVE ME BE, PLEASE? I GET SO FEW-W DAYS OFF AND I REALLY W-WANT TO W-WATCH THESE MOVIES! SO THANKS I GUESS!” towards the end Ahab joins my shouted speech with a howl and drowns me out. With the racket we’re making I’d be surprised if the ghost wants to face us at all.  
I peel off Sol’s hoodie and hang it up over my coat, resolving to wash it after I’ve had time to wind down after my trauma. As I kick my shoes off, my foot catches on something on the carpet I didn’t notice before.  
I squint at it, trying to figure out why I’m staring at a pair of cracked black glasses in the middle of the carpet.


	3. All that remains has blue eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn't ask for this. He didn't either. I hate his guts and I'm pretty sure he, 'he' referring to the ghost of the long-dead teenager bound to haunt me until I put him to rest, hates me too. Now I'm stuck investigating an unsolved murder that happened almost 17 years ago and I'm running out of excuses to explain my weird behavior to the friends who aren't already sick of me, and a sudden onslaught of paranormal activity in the house to my father. As if this wasn't bad enough, a pack of malicious entities have taken an interest in us and seem to want to devour our souls.  
> This is going to be a difficult year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter introduces a few more of Eridan's companions and is, as a result, slightly more humorous than what proceeded it. A little bit of background in this story and some Dave. Lots of Dave actually. A warning on the Dave. I'm still doing my best to make this creepy. I'm kind of bad at creepy.

“W-what the fuck?”  
Scooping the glasses up, I turn them over in my hands and examine the large cracks webbing the lenses, the bent arms and the scrapes on the black metal. The crunch of breaking these glasses would have scared me silly, so I am not responsible for the damage. I don’t remember seeing this pair of glasses in my house before. Cronus has down-right refused to wear glasses since he discovered contacts at age twelve and Pa had laser eye surgery before I was born, and these glasses look nothing like any pair of mine. Too thick about the rims, too librarian-ish and Terminator-ey for me to even consider wearing if not for a joke. Blech.  
Whose are these?  
The basement door seems to be open a tad wider. I drop the glasses on the cubby-shelves where we stack the shoes and keep the keys and will it to have disappeared the next time I pass through the hall. When I crouched, rain was wrung out of my jeans and made a wet patch on the floor. I need to change and dry off before I do anything else. Both bathrooms are on the upper floors which is just delightful as it requires a trip upstairs. Suddenly every detail of the house is sharpened and bright, every little thing I take for granted could be the hiding place of a demonic intruder. The curtains may fly open at any second to reveal the basement-monster, or perhaps it lurks underneath the tables or chairs or has squeezed itself underneath the couch, or perhaps I am being utterly ridiculous and Feferi is right about me and I really am paranoid and I should just haul my soaked ass upstairs before I ruin the carpet.  
I spare the carpet and as I go up the stairs, I do something I haven’t done since I was six when I decided that magic and all variations of it thereupon, such as the paranormal, don’t exist. You know that inescapable feeling we were all tortured by as children? The certainty that there was a nasty thing following us along the stairs? We had to run up the stairs otherwise the monster would catch up and push us down if we were going downstairs, or if we were going up, seize us by the neck and throw us to the bottom. At first I walked, determined not to give into the childish ritual, then on the third step I started a bolt and arrived at the top of the stairs, panting after my scramble and broke one of those unspoken rules: don’t look behind you.  
Just the hallway.  
Glad there is no one here to watch my foolish lapses, I head for the bathroom, glancing over my shoulder every few steps to prove I’m not scared. Throwing the sopping clothes into the hamper, I struggle into a pair of jeans and a loose T-shirt. All of my clothes are loose lately, even those that were uncomfortably tight before. Since quitting the swim-team I have lost a lot of muscle mass and my physique has changed quite drastically, although I am reluctant to apply to it the term Rose is fond of using these days, a ‘scarecrow’. These days I need to wear a belt with all of my jeans or they’ll be slipping off my hips before I’m out the door. My shirts hang off me. The effect of my new body in my old wardrobe is a little Sol-ish and disgusts me to look at.  
I undress very quickly, shivering with a little thrill of fear when I pass my shirt over my head and am blinded for a split second. Never before have I felt vulnerable in my own room, as if I needed to have my eyes open wide so I can see as much of my room as possible. The slightest movement makes me jump. My heart nearly stops when I see a flicker of black in the corner of the full-length mirror mounted on the far wall, but it turns out to be my shirt sleeve. I take a moment to look at myself and wish I hadn’t. The guy reflected in the mirror is messy and harassed, his eyes too alert and his skin pale so each of his freckles stand out a mile. Also now I’m sort of terrified something will to appear over my shoulder and start pulling faces. Can you see ghosts in the mirror? I swear they’re supposed to be invisible…or is that vampires? Damn I should have listened during those stupid horror sessions Karkat insists on organising every Halloween or on a slow weekend, but instead I spend that time refusing to participate on the grounds that ghosts aren’t real and those who think they are are soft in the head. Way to go, me.  
Like every piece of monster fodder in every bad scary film ever shot, I swallow nervously and say in a shaky voice “Hello? Is anyone there?”  
And feel a fool when ten silent minutes pass frozen in front of the mirror.

Last year I might have called Fef to ask her if she would come over to keep me company. She probably would have had to decline, but we would have talked until her mother chased her off the phone. My second choice would have been Karkat who most likely would be desperate for an excuse to escape his over-bearing brother, even if it was a swap of one insufferable prick for a slightly less irritating asshole. Now that Kankri’s away at the university with the others, Karkat isn’t always as eager to get out and go and he’s usually already taken by another one of our group by the time I get to him, about to go into a movie and the like. It’s not that I’m never invited on these outings, more that…I wouldn’t enjoy going out if I did join them. I haven’t enjoyed much recently.  
Even at Christmas, just three weeks past, I could barely muster up the energy to pretend I was having fun and wanted the cheerful company of my family. Lethargy hung over each day like a fog. From the moment I woke up I looked forward to the time I could climb back in bed, pull the covers over my head and forget I ever left my dreams. Sleep isn’t much of an escape, especially because I don’t know what it is specifically I am trying to escape, but it’s better than being awake and having to watch my friends chatter amongst themselves without anything to say, to watch Pa and Ahab zoom around the house without any urge to join them, to listen to Cronus laugh over some anecdote without wanting to laugh with him, or at him because he’s a total knob.  
I want to get out of this house badly, out of this oppressive fear that I am not alone, but I don’t know where to go.  
It’s only 12:40 in the afternoon which leaves about 5 and a half hours until Pa comes home from work. Where can I go for the next 5 and a half hours? A place people aren’t likely to notice me enough to question what I’m doing, I won’t run into anyone I know –or I’ll be able to hide from them easily if I do. 

In the end I decide to head for the biggest bookstore within walking distance, a huge converted warehouse creatively named ‘The Warehouse’ which doubles as the hipster and coolkid hang out due to having a popular privately owned café at the centre of it. Personally I think it’s incredibly stupid to have a coffee shop in a place that makes its money from books, because I often open up one to find a spatter of brown stains bled through several pages. There are very few things worse than that change from the triumph of tracking down a book I have been after for weeks/months to the absolute fury at finding some fool has damaged the book because they were assing around with their hot beverage.  
The house felt way too uncomfortable. I braved it for another half hour as I mulled over the possible safe houses, stalling with a number of reasons that each place I suggested could never be suitable. Eventually I had to put my foot down, when I found myself selecting an iron poker from the hearth to arm and left the house and, to my dismay, Ahab. I couldn’t leave her tied up outside for four hours. I left her dozing in bed. At least she will die happy if she is killed.  
As I was leaving I looked at the glasses, still stubbornly in place on the shelf, and I swear they looked back at me.  
That tore it. I promised myself I wasn’t coming back until the last possible moment and slammed the door extra hard. Now here I am, sunken into a beanbag with a huge book of cartoons on my lap. The weight of the book means I may never be able to rise form this gelatinous beanbag. Sure it’s obscenely comfortable, but I am beginning to fear the beanbag behaves like a perverted sort of Venus-human trap and is not providing a comfortable resting place, but in reality, slowly digesting me. On the bright side, Calvin and Hobbes are brilliant.  
For the first hour I manage to lose myself in the world of childhood and sketchy drawings. Switching off my brain is an art I have become rusty in. The unease edges back into my mind persistently. Each time I push it away it comes back more urgently than before. Kind of makes me want to bash my head on a wall until the foreboding dribbles out of my ears, which would attract me a lot of unwanted attention, so I restrain myself.  
I focus on my reading. When the drawings start to blur together, I pick another topic to focus on. Something positive. I think about Pa and how much better he has been lately.  
After his first remission he was still as tired every day as if he was still full of the toxins from chemo. Each day was a step away from the cancer that ate at his chest, big steps, small steps and sometimes his progress was too slow for my five year-old eyes to track, but I knew he was lucky for beating his demon in what seemed to me eyes, one swift, clean stroke. At that time I was so busy settling into the new town and making my new friends so I didn’t notice his struggle to good health as much as I would later. We lived in peace for 3 years until Pa found another lump not too far from the spot he found the first, then the alarm bells rang again and this time I was old enough to be aware of the gravity the words ‘Pa is poorly’ carried.  
Cronus has told me Pa faced this second round of chemo with much more energy and determination, because this time he had no extra family drama to handle at the same time the way he did with the first tumour. What I saw certainly was strength. He sort of…charged his cancer? Caught the bitch at an awkward angle and threw her on her back ( and I call it a ‘her’ because he named it a girl’s name, Siobhan, apparently a girl who bullied him all the way through elementary school back in Ireland) and beat her after a vicious fight. Two years. Since then not a hint of Siobhan which is about as close to cured as a cancer survivor gets. That was six years ago, and now I can’t remember ever seeing Pa happier.  
Even when She Who Shall Not Be Named was around, who I have very few memories of anyway considering how early in my life she buggered off, Pa has never been as happy in my eyes as he is now. These days, it’s work that makes him tired, or staying up too late with a good book or film. Although Cronus and I have a sort of unspoken agreement to do as much of the manual labour in the house as we can persuade him to let us do, he is physically capable in every way the average healthy human is entitled to be. His hair grew back thicker and redder and he just seems...no, he is, he is prepared for life this time.  
In the stories I used to read about cancer survivors, after their surgeries and chemo had finished, they hurled themselves at life. Now I haven’t seen Pa sky-diving or swimming with the dolphins or whatever else you’re supposed to do when you throw yourself at life, but I have seen him smiling without a sad subtext and I guess that’s good enough for me.  
All these happy thoughts about Pa’s recovery almost distracts me from my real concerns until my wandering eyes spot the spine of a book reading ‘The Possession’ then I’m catapulted to the uneasy place I started. God, just kill me now.  
“Hi Seamus.”  
I look up and cause myself to slip a few feet deeper into the beanbag “Hi Elizabeth.”  
Dave stands over me, his tall frame filling up the aisle. The dark shades I am used to seeing low on the bridge of his nose send a pang of panic through my chest, reminding me of the pair I have actually prayed will be gone by the time I get home. He doesn’t notice, hopefully, but either way he won’t ask.  
“Excellent choice in literature,” he points to the comic book “Personally, I’m a fan of Mary Worth.”  
Dave and I have known each other for the better part of four years. We met when he joined our current school at the middle school level. He got in on a scholarship, and four years later I’m still not sure what it is exactly that he excels in enough to prompt a scholarship from a school as prestigious as ours, unless being a coolkid is now a valid career option.  
Of course being a ‘charity case’ marked him out as bully fodder and it only made his case worse when he strode into the class wearing those stupid shades, a My Little Pony T-shirt, ripped jeans and a pair of converse which were probably older than the school. What I perceived at first as a blatant disregard for style irked me immediately. Since then as both I and my thinking process have matured, I realise Dave is perfectly comfortable in his own sort of style, the battered, messy casual one only he seems to be able to pull off.  
But 13-year old Eridan decided he needed to be taught a lesson. On his second day in the school, I cornered him by the lockers with the intent to humiliate him. He must have assumed I was going to break out some Irish brawling moves on him, because the second I opened my mouth he punched me square in the nose and broke it. I responded in kind. We agreed on a truce as we pinched our throbbing noses in the nurse’s office, half grudgingly, half in admiration of each other.  
I enjoy Dave’s company the most out of my group of friends, because with Dave there’s not always a need to talk, he’s fine with just sitting and thinking about nothing in particular. It’s easy to switch off around him. Obviously I’m never going to tell him this.  
We both go out of our respective ways to annoy each other; the moment he found out I had a middle name, he refused to refer to me with anything else. I copied him again. His middle name really is Elizabeth. No, really, it is.  
“I didn’t know-w you could read.” I grin “W-would you like some help picking a book? I used to really like ‘Go Spot Go’.”  
He shrugs “Depends on how pretty the pictures are.” he offers me a hand up “I think you’re about to lose your ass in that beanbag.”  
It takes a real effort from both of us to get me out of there, enough that Dave claps me on the back when we eventually succeed as if he was afraid I wasn’t going to make it.  
“What are you doing here, princess? I can’t remember the last time I saw you out of your tower.” He glances over his shoulder, looking for whoever accompanied me “Where’s the prince? Congratulations are in order.”  
“There is no prince. I came out because I felt like it.”  
His eyebrows shoot up “Is your house on fire? Being sprayed for bugs, maybe? If that’s the case I’m glad you got out in time.”  
I flick his shades down, which he hates because it messes with his style and reveals his eyes. One of the only cute things about Dave is how self-conscious he is about having an eye condition, no matter how many times he is told it’s kind of cool or could work for him, or that it’s better than having chronic pink eye (I’ve told him that last one so many times I lost count). His eyes are red as the rose, which compliments his snow-white skin and white blonde hair beautifully. I think he has a problem with his pigmentation. Whatever it is, he and Karkat share the condition- Karkat is determinedly less shy about it- and they both have to cover up in the sun.  
He brushes my hand away “Don’t touch my shades.”  
I also love the fact that he says that seriously “W-what are you doing here?”  
Shrugging again, Dave turns to the shelves and begins scanning the titles “Seen anything that looks ghost-ish? I need some books on paranormal shit for a project….Seamus. Seamus. Hello. Transmitting to planet Seamus, do you read me?”  
He waves a hand in front of my eyes, confused by the wide-eyed, incredulous stare I am giving him.  
Now this is just un-fucking-fair. This has to be a sign. I don’t even believe in fate, or God with much conviction, but I’d have to be an idiot of the highest class to miss the neon divine fucking sign flashing before me.  
“Yep. I read you.” Fortunately my voice doesn’t betray my racing heart “Hav-ven’t seen much over here.”  
“Bro, you’re sitting smack-dab in the middle of the Occult section.”  
I look up at the sign over my head. Sure enough, a big black ‘OCCULT’ in Chiller font.  
“And I was reading Calvin and Hobbes.” I remind him “How-w can I be expected to notice my surroundings with such a triumph in modern cartooning in my lap? Jesus Liz, go easy on me.”  
“You are so weird.” he says, bumping my shoulder fondly “Give a bro a hand; anything that has ghosts in it, I should probably give a skim.”  
My pulse pounds in my throat. My eyes wander over the titles, sliding over the same book several times before I read the words. Finally I formulate the words to ask: “W-what’s the project this time?” I ask it wearily, because Dave is always working on something obscure and secretive and he guards the details of his latest exploits as jealously as any dragon. More often than not he’s helping Rose with her research for her latest short story. Those two have been bosom buddies in the most platonic sense of the word from the day they met. They were practically made for each other and would most likely dating if it weren’t for the fact that both of them are gay…bisexual…whatever they are, they’re not dating.  
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” he is reading through the first few pages of the biography of a ghost hunter, which looks a little sketchy and low quality to me, like the books they put next to the magazines at the super market check-out. “I know twelve ways to kill a man with a chopstick, Seamus. None of them are pretty. So don’t ask and I won’t leave a nasty corpse for your dad to stumble over.”  
When he talks like this it just makes me want to bug him more. Pestering the living shit out of Dave is one of the few hobbies I haven’t given up lately “Is Rose w-writing a story about a ghost? I heard iron w-works w-wonders for repelling them.”  
“Nah, sage is the best. Iron is a mêlee situation.”  
For the briefest second I wonder if Dave has experienced something similar to me- maybe he knows because he had to fight off a ghost with iron? Then I remember what an avid fan of Supernatural he is. You so much as drop the word ‘angel’ into a conversation and his eyes will glaze over behind his shade as he pictures Misha Collins in compromising positions, he’s impossible to rouse unless you splash water over him.  
Then something occurs to me. There’s sage in the back yard.  
Dave looks at me strangely when I start to laugh, alarmed by the maniac tone. 

I stayed in The Warehouse for another few hours with Dave, enjoying myself in spite of myself. Dave has that sort of relaxing effect on me, at the same time as making me want to strangle him with my scarf. While he conducted Rose’s research by proxy, I scribbled a few notes of my own. The stuff I paid attention to are facts which have been repeated across several books, cross-referenced on the Internet via Dave’s tablet (he made me arm wrestle him to prove myself worthy of borrowing it), stuff that has the greatest chance of working if I need to defend myself. I still can’t believe I am compiling an inventory against this basement-monster l am almost certain doesn’t exist in the first place.  
The first thing I do upon arriving home is go straight around the side of the house to take a clipping of sage. Once inside I plan to burn it. Apparently sage has cleansing effects on spirits. It’s supposed to purge their bad emotions and make them feel better, or kick them out entirely or something, like a weird kind of drug for ghosts.  
I retrieve the clippers from the shed and stoop over the sage bush. The moment I crouch, the hairs on the back of my neck prickle and the breath freezes in my chest. I can feel eyes on my back. I turn around, putting my knees to the grass.  
In the window of a second story room, my bedroom, there is a dark shape framed by the fluttering curtains. When I squint the shape resolves itself into the outline of a person approximately my height with long hair and a hooded jacket. Its eyes are blue. A hot, burning, drowning blue.  
I wave to the shape cheerfully.


	4. All that remains....is...something I guess, but who knows what

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn't ask for this. He didn't either. I hate his guts and I'm pretty sure he, 'he' referring to the ghost of the long-dead teenager bound to haunt me until I put him to rest, hates me too. Now I'm stuck investigating an unsolved murder that happened almost 17 years ago and I'm running out of excuses to explain my weird behavior to the friends who aren't already sick of me, and a sudden onslaught of paranormal activity in the house to my father. As if this wasn't bad enough, a pack of malicious entities have taken an interest in us and seem to want to devour our souls.  
> This is going to be a difficult year.

You people may have guessed by now that I’m a bit of an idiot. Yes I wave at the shape as I snip a good sized piece of sage off the bush and I even consider blowing it a kiss. Fuck me. There really is something in my house. Cronus is NOT playing a prank. I found a genuine skeleton in my basement and I really did see something’s hand gripping the sides of that shelf in the bricks, climbing out of the dust and the dark. That pair of glasses will be where I left them, unless the shape peels away from the window and beats me to retrieving them.  
FUCK ME. THAT IS A GHOST. I WAVED AT A GHOST. WELL, TIME TO ADJUST EVERYTHING I WAS EVER CERTAIN OF.  
For a moment I stare at it and it stares back with blue eyes. Keeping eye contact with the shape makes my ears ring, my head ache, but I’m determined not to be the first to turn away. Now that I am focussed, I can see the shape is a teenage boy, within a few months of my age. His hair is black and swept back over a broad pair of shoulders. His frame reminds me of the guys I knew when I was on the swimming team, who logged in countless hours in the pool to hone their bodies to a sort of Greek God-like level of perfection – God were they a treat for the eyes.  
A pressure builds behind my eyes, becoming so fierce it is hard to see, but I can just about make out a set of pleasant features-classically handsome or something- and coffee-coloured skin. While half of me is ready to pitch into full melt-down mode because there is a ghost standing at the window of my bedroom, the other half is grading the ghost for his looks. An easy B, maybe even an A in better light. Surprisingly, the half which really hopes he hasn’t got a shirt under his jacket is winning. That’s humans for you. We like what we know and I definitely know how to ogle a guy, but I have no fucking clue how to deal with a ghost.  
With a roar in my ears and what feels like ton-heavy weights behind my eyes, I am glad I am already on the ground otherwise I would have keeled over by now and injured myself. I start to sway from side to side slightly. I seem to be having a visceral reaction to what I am looking at. He’s as cool as a cucumber. But then, even as I watch, a dark liquid leaks from the corner of his mouth. More liquid trails down his cheeks like tracks of tears. His face shadows, the dark swallowing up every feature but his eyes which are reduced pinpricks of angry blue. And then he is gone.  
One instant he is there and in the next there’s not a trace of him to implicate there was ever anyone there.   
Later I may reflect on this moment as one of the braver things I have done in my life. As I do it I don’t want to think about how ill-advised and foolhardy strolling right into the house with nothing but a fistful of sage to defend myself is, so instead I think about how nice it would be to join the swim team again. Circling the house again, I swallow the bile in my throat and force myself to think about how good I used to be at swimming. When I push the door open my mind is not on the glasses still resting on the shoe-shelves, it is on the speed at which I used to be able to swim, how I used to be the second fastest swimmer and had the best butterfly stroke on the team and let me tell you that stroke is a furious bitch to master.  
By the time I have lit the sage with the lighter I am not supposed to have, I have decided to join the team again. Training and team activities will get me out of the house for a little while longer at least. From the notes I took with Dave, and I am holding them and skimming the notes on sage, I have the option of waving the sage in the shape of a cross or shouting ‘Roanoke!’ (that must have seeped in from American Horror Story). I feel totally ridiculous even with a justification for this whole ‘spirit cleansing’ so fresh my head aches still. I opt not to do either of those stupid things, satisfying myself with spreading a good dash of sage smoke into every room in the house.  
My stomach does a flip when I pass the basement and then tries to exit my body via my mouth when I arrive at the bottom of the stairs. This time I don’t do a mad dash. I’m not sure I want to run to the top of the stairs if there is a chance of being met by a pair of open arms. Keeping my eyes trained on the landing, I stubbornly ignore the flickers of movement in the corner of my eyes demanding my attention. A strange sense of calm diffuses through my body. My heart rate lowers. Apathy numbs my panic.  
Ok. A ghost. He hasn’t tried to throw me down the stairs or molest me like that one episode of X-Files, there’s been no poltergeist activity or bloody handprints on the walls. So far. On the first day he has chosen to make himself properly known, he has yet to do anything evil.  
“Hey! Was that you on the stairs last year?” I call out, my voice horrible and incongruous in the oppressive silence “It sounded like something took a tumble down the stairs in the middle of the night, only it wasn’t me or Pa, so was it you?”  
I expect no reply. None comes.  
“I’ll bet you tripped over the dog. She can’t seem to get it into her thick canine skull that the couch is for napping, not the top of the stairs.”   
My room is undisturbed. Not a single drawer in the dresser is open, the closet door still gapes onto a few coats and a stack of boxes full of old books, the bed is made, the desk remains in the mess I left it in last night. None of the wall decorations have been defaced and there is no bleeding woman attached to the ceiling, ready to burst into flames. The creepiest thing is that if I hadn’t seen the ghost from the yard there would be no way for me to tell he was here. Some of the books I read this afternoon talked about the oppressive atmosphere felt in a room where a ghost is or has recently been. This has been suggested to be anything from the pressure of the ghost’s unresolved problems and strong emotions to a phenomena which occurs because ghosts simply don’t belong to the dimension in which they are called ghosts, that is to say ours. Mine. The living world.  
What an insubstantial presence.   
After I finish the rest of the top floor, I put the sage out in the bathroom attached to my room. The smell of sage is quite pleasant. It clings to my hands, a powerful, sweet musk conjuring up faded memories of games I played with Ahab and Cronus when I young.   
I have felt threatened in my own house a few times before, most of those times immediately after a horror film. This is not one of those times. It’s not that I feel threatened, it’s more that I feel uneasy. Whatever it is that has taken up residence in this house is not a new addition to the surroundings, going by the yellowish hue of the bones, the overall lack of flesh and odour of rot. I’m almost certain this shape, this ghost, maybe even this person, is responsible for the cold spot near the bookshelf, the inexplicable noises and the phantom tripper, which means I did not awaken it, I disturbed it.  
Ghosts are supposed to have unfinished business which anchors them to the living world. Major problems like leaving children or spouses behind. This ghost has a serious problem. I suppose the first thing I should do is sit back and observe for a little while, as terrifying as the prospect is, and watch for signs of the ghost’s activity. From there I should try to categorise what type of ghost this is from the variety I have summarised in my notes.  
Poltergeists: German for ‘noisy spirit’, pretty much does what the name suggests. Mild cases involve chucking things about and writing dirty words on the walls in edible ink, extreme cases involve little girls in soiled nightgowns crawling about on all fours and barfing pea soup in every direction. The incident on the stairs could be classed as a form of poltergeist activity, as with the way objects fall off shelves of their own accord or relocate themselves. If I can class this ghost as a poltergeist so far it’s been a very well behaved one and I should leave it alone, because there’s no reason to expect much damage from it.  
Disembodied spirit: basically just the hobos of the spirit world. They haunt the places they died, which makes sense in this house’s case considering there’s a whole fucking skeleton chilling in the basement wall. Noted as photo-bombers, love to pop up over your shoulder in the bathroom mirror and spew some blood down their fronts to give you a good scare and may take you on a small quest to find their bones and give them a proper burial. One of the more plausible options, but just in case I think I’ll wait to move the bones until the ghost makes it clear if it wants their remains touched.  
Demon: nasty fuckers. The creatures of legend which lead travellers astray, collect virgins and devour souls like popcorn. If this is a demon, then I am royally fucked, and by tomorrow I’ll either have been dragged into the ether as a snack or wake up to find I’ve been used as a demon’s scratching post. Apparently demons go about smelling as if they haven’t seen a shower in a few years and sleep on a mattress of rotten eggs. Although the smell of sage fills the entire house at the moment, I’m pretty certain I’d notice if I there was a putrid stink on that level of nastiness.  
Lying on my bed, I consider each possibility carefully, matching up the occurrences in the house I am aware of to the descriptions of the activities the types are typically blamed for. All the while a small voice is whispering doubts at the back of my mind. Ghosts are just fairy tales made up by the grief-stricken who want to believe there’s a way for their loved ones to come back to them, or by fools whose limited intelligence means they can’t understand the scientific explanation for weird shit that happens in nature. At their core, they are remnants of an age where you were considered an amoral bastard for writing with your left hand, excuses for the laws of nature no one could comprehend, tales to keep children close to the hearth during the nights.  
Nonsense plain and simple, and yet I am sitting at my desk evaluating the situation with a clinical scrutiny I keep in reserve for the treatment of scientific materials.  
But I saw him. With my own eyes, through my glasses. He wasn’t an illusion created by refraction of the light on my lenses.   
He was there and he is here, somewhere, even if he leaves no footprints.


	5. All that remains gets too close for comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn't ask for this. He didn't either. I hate his guts and I'm pretty sure he, 'he' referring to the ghost of the long-dead teenager bound to haunt me until I put him to rest, hates me too. Now I'm stuck investigating an unsolved murder that happened almost 17 years ago and I'm running out of excuses to explain my weird behavior to the friends who aren't already sick of me, and a sudden onslaught of paranormal activity in the house to my father. As if this wasn't bad enough, a pack of malicious entities have taken an interest in us and seem to want to devour our souls.  
> This is going to be a difficult year.

“Did you knock over the spice rack?” are Pa’s first words when he comes home.  
Still on my bed, I spring up at the sound of his voice downstairs and skid to the landing “No!” my face is flushed, and not from the quick sprint “I just burned something in the kitchen and it made a horrible smell, so I burned some sage to cov-ver it up.”  
He waves a hand in front of his face “Good thing we like herbs here. What did you burn?”  
“Uh…rice.” I try hopefully.  
Pa shrugs. “Be more careful next time.” he puts his coat up and his keys away, totally missing the cracked glasses on the shelf. Of course he does. There’s nothing remarkable about them, except that they belong to a non-corporeal being and are very solid, and haven’t moved an inch from the place I left them even though I have seen them being worn since then. He doesn’t know to be impressed and a little bit scared.  
I can hear him in the living room, shedding his work outfit. A moment later he appears stripped of his jacket and starched shirt, naked to the waist, and tromps up stairs.   
“What did you do with your day off?” he pats my head as he goes past.  
“Took care of that chore. W-walked the dog, talked to Karkat. I w-went to The W-warehouse and helped Liz w-with a project.”  
His surprise and delight are plain “What happened to the movie marathon?”  
“I got bored.” I lie “Also it w-was really cold in here, ev-ven with the heating up, so I decided to go spend the day somew-where else.”  
Ahab realises belatedly that her second human has arrived home and runs to the door barking. She turns in a confused circle, sniffs at the wet footprints Pa left on the welcome mat, then shoots upstairs. On her way past, her tail slaps me in the shoulder and covers me with a poof of slightly damp dog fur.   
Pa yelps, probably because the dog ran into his legs “Why is Captain Ahab wet?”  
“It rained on us during the w-walk.”  
“Didn’t you towel her off?”  
With a pang of guilt, I say “Yeah I did. Maybe she w-went outside again.” this house has felt like another reality all day. Little details have slipped out of my grasp all day, forgotten in this whirlwind of weirdness, but I still feel bad for Ahab. She’s been cold all day.  
“Isn’t it chilly?”  
“You’re in skinny jeans and a T-shirt. Go put on some sweatpants and a sweater, and get the dog again while you’re at it.”  
I whistle. Ahab bounds out of Pa’s room, slides on her pads and boings off the opposite wall. From her first steps, Ahab has been as clumsier than any other dog I’ve ever laid eyes on. She’s only three years old, so sometimes I wonder if all this bashing about will cause an aneurysm and kill her young. Our last dog died peacefully in his sleep at the ripe old age of sixteen. I was fourteen at the time and the thought of death didn’t faze me much, having been raised by an on-and-off cancer patient. However being confronted by the harsh reality of a death within my own family shook me so badly, after the funeral in the back yard I locked myself in my room for two days straight, drinking from the sink and living off a diet of the various sugary contrabands I had hidden under my bed. I would have gone on longer, but on the night of what would have been the third day, Pa broke the door down with a fire axe and made me eat a plate of sandwiches. We had a long talk that night about death and how to deal with grief, which Cronus joined in because he smelled the pesto (the only thing he’ll wake up for barring emergencies is food) and expressed his surprise that I hadn’t died yet.  
A week later we went to the pound and picked out a bouncing black new-born puppy. We named her Captain Ahab after one of Pa’s favourite characters in literature. In the three years we have had her, she has proved herself to be loving, alert and possibly the stupidest creature ever to stumble across the earth on four legs. I’m pretty sure she thinks the pet door is an alternate entrance for us humans in case we get bored of doors.  
I reach into the closet near the bathroom for the dog’s towel, hesitantly, waiting for a hand to shoot out of the gloom and close around my arm. I withdraw my hand with the towel and shut the closet door. Again, I can describe what I feel right now as unease close to what I might feel after watching a horror movie, except this isn’t at all unfounded. I wrap Ahab up and rub her fur until she’s ruffled and dry.  
My earlier attempt to steer Pa towards asking if he thinks the house is haunted fell flat, so this time I decide there’s no point in subtlety. “Pa, hav-ve you ev-ver heard anything w-weird in this house?” I follow him into the kitchen and sit at the island where we eat breakfast.  
“What type of weird?” he asks, busying himself in the cabinets.  
“I mean like stuff you can’t explain. Like disjointed noises and shi- uh, stuff.”  
“Are we talking about the stairs again?” he cocks an eyebrow “Is this a confession, lad?”  
“Wasn’t me!” wasn’t you either I add silently. “I mean weird stuff like disembodied voices.”  
“Does this have to do with Dave’s project?”  
“Yeah, definitely.” I say, grateful for the excuse “He’s quizzing ev-veryone. Something about finding a haunted house.”  
“I thought Dave was a sceptic.”  
“That’s w-why he’s trying to find a place called ‘haunted’, so he can disprov-ve it.”  
Pa laughs “I swear you two were separated at birth!”   
Parents tend to love Dave, despite his sardonic cool-kid attitude and consequently casual treatment of his superiors which a lot of people would find impertinent. Yes, Dave is an excellent excuse to use.   
“I wouldn’t call any of the weird stuff in the house paranormal.” he selects a can of red beans “Let’s do red beans and rice tonight, yeah?” don’t ask me where an Irish man picked up a fondness for Caribbean food. I blame globalisation.   
“Fine.” I say, then press “Seriously though, nothing at all?”  
He gives me a look “Seriously though. Our house isn’t haunted Eridan, it’s just old.”

With such a good dinner in me I might have managed to take my mind off the ghost in favour of something less stressful, but when I had finished washing my share of the dishes and make for the TV room through the hall, I see something which makes me stop.  
There he is. Sitting on the bloody landing. Knees tucked into his chest, arms folded on top of them, he leans on the banister, his face unfathomable and the ring fills my head again so sharply that I fall to my knees.  
Hearing the thump, Pa calls “What’s wrong?” from the front room.  
There’s a bloody ghost staring at me “Nothing!”  
I shut my eyes and turn my face to the floor. The pain blinds me. Then it lessens by slow degrees, until after what seems like an hour I can lift my aching head and look back up at him. In the time I spent hunched in agony he has halved the distance between us and now sits halfway down the staircase.  
“Go away.” my heart pounds, my words quiet out of fear that Pa will hear me, or that he might.  
He’s so solid. He casts a shadow, a long shadow thrown over the steps close to touching mine. I inch away from him, knowing that if he casts a shadow he can most likely hurt me if he chooses to. “Leave me alone.” I whisper. My shoulder bumps the shelf and the glasses fall into my lap. “Leave us alone.”  
The sound of a film starting up in the next room pours into the hall, filling up the silence between me and him. His eyes flick towards the door of the front room, than he stands up slowly, and begins to walk down the stairs. I can hear his footsteps, light and soft, more like the suggestion of footsteps than the real thing, but each one echoes in my head like the gong of a bell. A sheaf of dark hair falls over his shoulder. He turns towards the front room and back to me. In a smooth, effortless and nearly silent movement he crouches no less than a foot in front of me.  
He reaches out with a whisper of fabric. Protests die in my throat. I can make no noise. He plucks the glasses out of my lap and puts them back on, seemingly relieved to be able to cover his eyes again. The ghost pauses as if he wants to say something, but he remains completely silent as he reaches out again and touches my shoulder. He isn’t touching bare skin but I can still feel the shocking cold of his skin. My mouth clamps shut. The urge to scream has passed and now I’m just kind of…confused. Less and less scared, more bewildered by this ghost who seems to be about to pull me into a hug.  
Eventually he removes his arm and straightens up. He turns his back to me wordlessly and lopes off down the hall, going into the basement. The door shuts behind him.  
“Eridan?” says Pa “Are you alright?”  
“F-fine.” I swallow “Y-yeah, I’m f-fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pace of the haunting should speed up pretty soon. I'm sure most readers have already guessed who this ghost is, so don't worry, you can expect some actual words between Eridan and his mysterious house guest before too much longer. I have to admit I've been holding off on writing creepy-ish things so far because writing them puts me on edge too. I mean I hope I've managed to creep out a few of you. Kind of the point of writing a ghost story, you know?


	6. All that remains can't swim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn't ask for this. He didn't either. I hate his guts and I'm pretty sure he, 'he' referring to the ghost of the long-dead teenager bound to haunt me until I put him to rest, hates me too. Now I'm stuck investigating an unsolved murder that happened almost 17 years ago and I'm running out of excuses to explain my weird behavior to the friends who aren't already sick of me, and a sudden onslaught of paranormal activity in the house to my father. As if this wasn't bad enough, a pack of malicious entities have taken an interest in us and seem to want to devour our souls.  
> This is going to be a difficult year.

“You look awful.”  
Sol takes the proffered hoodie out of my hand quickly. He avoids touching my skin out of fear of being infected by ‘nerd germs’ with less insulting gusto than normal, noticing the deep bags under my eyes. From Sol this description is generous because I know I look like I crawled out of the grave. At breakfast Pa asked if I had slept at all. On the walk to school I practically stumbled into the road a few times and was even stopped by one concerned stroller-pushing dad who asked if I wanted an ambulance called. Sol is the first person out of my ‘circle’ (although I tend to think of him as a bump on the circumference now) I have seen this morning, but the looks from the other students have shown me clearly that I appear more than noticeably weary.  
He’s actually concerned. It’s kind of cute “Do you want to go to the nurses’ office?”  
“I w-want to go to bed.” I brush past him and struggle with my locker.  
He pushes me to the side and twists the combination in, opening it for me. Great. How long has he known how to open my locker? The sudden disappearance of my English textbook isn’t so mysterious now.  
Giving him the most withering look my half-closed eyes can manage, I fumble inside for the day’s necessities. Sol retreats to his own locker five doors down from mine. I don’t want to look at him. I can’t without feeling that painful tightness in my chest when I look past the (still empty) locker exactly between ours. It was Feferi’s. I wish they’d hurry up and give it to another student. There’s no sense in wasting some perfectly good space.  
“Rough night?” he asks eventually “I’ll bet you were jerking off over some German porn into the small hours.”  
The insult is weak, but I rise to the bait anyway “Nope. I w-was talkin’ to Fef. I had to w-wait for her to get home, what w-with the different time-zones and w-we lost track of time.”  
I spent the night underneath my bed with the dog under one arm and an iron poker clenched firmly in the other fist. Every shadow that flickered on the floor made my heart skip a beat. Once or twice I was absolutely certain I saw the closet door glide open. Each time I stared so hard my eyes became dry and I was sure they were going to pop out of my skull until the illusion fell away into the dark again, then I would blink and stifle a whimper and pray the dawn would break early. I would have got in bed with Pa if I’d had it in me to brave the dark stretch of hallway between our rooms. Ahab was content to sleep in the curve of my side and I eventually managed to join her in sleep, slipping off around 4 a.m. according to the alarm clock I brought down with me.  
Four hours of sleep. And I haven’t talked to Fef this month. Neither of those is Sol’s business. I’m not going to waste my precious little energy on him today. Sol stares at me strangely for another moment. Then he opens his locker and the door hides his face.

By some random, miraculous stroke of luck my first class is a double dose of Chemistry, which is basically child’s play for me. I can sleep through the total of the two hours the class lasts and not lose any ground. As an added bonus, my good-ish friend Rose Lalonde sits next to me and she’ll let me copy her notes if she thinks I deserve it. Clearly, what I’m most in need of today is some good remedial sleeping, so she promises me her notes and to divert any of the teacher’s questions from me. She even goes as far to fold up a piece of knitting she was working on during the free periods for a pillow. I almost want her to give me a goodnight kiss on the forehead. Instead she pats me on the head , assuring me she’s going to wheedle the real reason I didn’t sleep out of me. I repeated the same flimsy excuse I gave Sol earlier. Rose has an almost psychic knack for discerning lies from the truth, possibly owing to her passion for psychology. I’m glad Rose is here. If I have another night like the last I am going to need some serious therapy, amateur therapist or no.  
I lower my head to the plush knitwear gratefully. My eyes slam shut.

I’m swimming.  
In the pool, the ‘old’ pool although it only became old in my mind this last year when I gradually fell out of the habit of using it. Its details are still familiar. Clean white tile walls, a high curved ceiling lined with skylights, the fixtures hanging overhead which light the pool at night in harsh neon strips. The floor is cool under my feet. Little puddles splash my ankles as I walk to the edge of the pool. I sit down and slip my legs in. It’s always cold at first, but it’s always bracing.  
The water accepts me back without hesitation. On the far side of the pool, the swim team, my ‘old’ team, wait for me to finish the lap. The boys are rectangular smudges of black in their trunks against the distant wall, the girls triangle-shaped in their one-piece suits. I have the vague impression they’re egging me on, but I’m already under the water, enclosed in my own private blue world with a rippling sky. Bubbles billow around me. The goggles pinch my nose as I look across the sloping bottom to the other end of the pool. Dividers normally separate the pool into several lanes, but today they have been removed and I know it’s for my benefit. Today it is just me in the open water. They’re testing me, the old team, to see if I still have that special something that allowed me to master the worst stroke and place top in so many races and put my competitors to shame. I know I do. It’s just a matter of remembering how I did it.  
Butterfly comes naturally. My muscles behave as if they have their own mind, flowing into the starting posture for my best stroke before the word even enters my head. Head down, I launch from the wall. Wings of water course away on either side. My start is strong, lots of momentum to work with. It’s effortless, like breathing. Why did I ever give this up?  
More importantly what the fuck is that on the floor?  
I’m so surprised by what I see I stop mid-stroke, face down and stare through my goggles. She’s distorted by the steam inside my lenses, but I can tell I am looking at a little girl. Physically small, not young. About my age? She is inappropriately clothed for the swim in a white dress, the skirts of which float around her like her own personal cloud. Her short hair looks black in the poor lighting, and it drifts weightless about her face, over her wide eyes and her pursed lips.  
I lift my head out of the water for breath without looking away. Through the rippling surface, I see her face warped into a savage approximation what I first saw. Her lips pull back over sharp teeth. Her eyes are black. Not the iris; inch is jet, void of any form of light. She must be blind with those eyes.  
In the time I take to blink she travels from the very bottom of the pool a good six metres down to the surface without making a single ripple. Small fingers wrap around my neck and choke a cry of protest. Her strength is irresistible. She submerges me effortlessly. The other arm winds around my waist and pulls me close so that the contours of her body and mine are matched. We sink horizontally in a storm of bubbles. I push against her desperately, knowing dozens of the bubbles that flit past my head are composed of the air leaking from my mouth.  
She opens her mouth and no bubbles are released “I hate the fucking water.” as clearly as if we were on dry land and she were whispering into my ear.  
The water becomes icy and sucks every drop of warmth from my body, but I don’t feel it because the heat of the hate in her eyes and her smile are enough to burn me and then Rose is shaking my arm and telling me softly that everyone has begun to pack up and it’s time to move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I know, dream sequences and white dresses on creepy girls are a tired old cliche. I really don't have much of an excuse for either.


	7. All that remains and I have a chat

At a some point during the completion of any kind of journey, you’ll arrive at a peak. This is the absolute climax, the moment for the death and the drama and the Oscar-winning close-ups, which is experienced with as much fear or enthusiasm as the traveller can muster. Then the moment passes and it’s time to descend from the peak and continue on your way. Perhaps a few more ‘peaks’ lie in wait ahead, but in reality these are nothing but mere hills, easily surmounted and more easily forgotten. Now I may be mistaken in my belief that last night was the absolute peak of fear I will feel until the events at my house reach their close, and it’s more than likely that I am over-estimating myself here, but I need to tell myself something that will help me deal with the situation I am in.  
I’m reasoning with myself all the way through the first recess (or ‘break’ because we’re too big and mature to be calling it that anymore). Karkat took one look at me and put an energy drink in front of me – later I’ll learn this was his entire lunch for the day because he was rushed as hell getting out of the house today and I’ll be very touched- then went off to conduct business elsewhere, leaving me on the bench he found me with a promise to check on me later in the day.  
This drink tastes like Coke took a piss. I’m still going to finish it though. It’s waking me up in the way that falling into a thorny bush would jerk you back to your senses. I need to be at least aware that I’m awake to figure out what to do from here on.  
I certainly can’t risk another night like the last one. ‘Sleepless night’… now that sounds so pretty and romantic with its connotations of worry and tossing and turning and watching your partner’s eyes dance underneath their eyelids, but really going without sleep is starvation of the mind and will leave you almost unable to even think clearly because you’re barely certain what you’re looking at is part of the real world or a part of your dreams bleeding into the reality in front of your tired eyes. If there’s one thing I loathe more than anything else, Sol included, it’s not being able to think properly. My mind is my weapon, although you’d have no idea from the way I act or talk.  
Several things need to happen: firstly, I need to sleep. Secondly I need to talk to this ghost, to figure out what he wants, how dangerous he is, and if it’s bad, then I’ll call in Rose or something. She half-believes this magic shit so she’s probably better informed on what to do when this kind of shit hits the fan of life. Or just ditch his bones in the park. If he’s some undead little Orphan Annie type thing, maybe I can get a psychic family to adopt him out of the house. Wouldn’t it be great if I could pack all my troubles up in a wicker basket and send it off down the Nile?  
Doubt it though. Nothing is ever easy for my family. It’s never just narcissism: it’s a personality disorder. It’s never just a little fight with a good friend: it’s an earth-shattering row that drives you straight out of your home town. It’s never just a large zit: it’s a tumour.  
See what sleep deprivation does to me? I need to go further than a little bit of research and some burnt sage. Before I make the conscious decision, I’m on my feet and making tracks for the nurse’s office. The nurse, and if you want to picture her then imagine Nick Frost with tits, is sympathetic when I complain of a horrible headache, or possibly afraid. Once they figure out someone in your family went head-to-head with the big C, every little complaint of the body is a sweating landmine that they’re desperate not to be caught in, responsible for, when it goes off. I think I’ve used the ‘headache’ complaint four times since the start of the year. I promised myself the first time it wasn’t going to be a regular thing, which is exactly how Cronus became a smoker.  
On my way out, I run into Sol, literally. I bounce off him into a wall and he pings off to the side. For moments like these, we don’t need words. The filthy glares we exchange are enough. But because today I’m a special case, instead of storming off after his glare, he asks me where I’m going.  
“Home.” I say smugly “Tell the others, w-would you?” the frown that darkens his mismatched eyes is delicious. He hates it when I ask him to do things he’ll end up having to do anyway. He hates being trapped, especially by me.  
“Why?”  
“Headache.”  
“You mean you’re bunking off school to take a nap?”  
“I took a nap in Chemistry.”  
He’ll ask Rose to confirm that “Then why are you going?”  
“I do believ-ve that’s none of your business.” I say curtly, whirl on my heel (and stumble into the wall again) and stalk off.  
My exit is meant to be devastating and mysterious. Sol usually gets this kind of thing and will go back to whatever sad agenda he has, but today must be really different because he walks after me and will not leave the subject.  
“You’re weird today.” he says, drawing level.  
“You think that’s an insult coming from you?” I aim a pointed glance at his bag, a Hello-Kitty vintage affair I am secretly jealous of.  
He cuts me off, stepping in front of me “I mean something isn’t right about you.”  
“I slept about two hours last night Solluxander, w-what other explanation are you lookin’ for?” here comes the Irish brogue “That I w-was attacked? That my father has relapsed? That my brother did somethin’ stupid again? That my mother suddenly turned up and w-wants back in my life? Or maybe it’s aliens! No, there are no aliens or family emergencies so get the fuck out of my way.”  
Heads would be turning our way if there was anyone here but us. The look he gives me is the one the rabbit makes at the gun’s barrel, unsure why the hunter has chosen it for dinner out of every alternative in the forest. I know I’m giving more than I’m getting- one of the unspoken laws of our battles is that it only escalates as far as both participants are willing to take it, which must be why we’ve had so few physical fights in our long career of rivalry.  
So instead of calling me out on this, he wipes the bewilderment and the hurt off his face and says “You know your accent gets more Irish when you’re pissed off?”  
I glower “I have no words for you.”   
Ducking around him, I bite my lip and try to ignore the guilt.  
Then he calls after me: “Doesn’t that count?” and I walk a little faster.  
I’m glad to have seen Sol because it gives me something else to stew over on the walk home. All these menial concerns start to swarm in my mind, stuff I have rarely spared a thought for since Fef left and before I know it I’m raging like I did in the old days. There are so many nice normal things to be mentally griping over, like the fact that Pa could probably pay off the entirety of America’s debts to China with the ‘change’ in his back pocket but I don’t have my own car yet, that my 18th birthday is weeks away and I still haven’t been kissed let alone laid, that Sol is a stupid whore, that I hate my friends and they hate me and that cancer is either proof that humans are the most uselessly designed creatures on earth or that God is a childish bastard undeserving of His omnipotence and the ceaseless worship.  
Like the old days, I am drowning in a sea of complaints, but this time a part of me can stand on the dock and appreciate how easy some of this stuff is and how lucky I am that these are my most major concerns- apart from the cancer thing of course. I’ve sunk so deep by the time I get home, that I throw the door right open without a concern for the ghost. Then my eyes catch the top of the stairs and it rushes back to me in a tsunami.   
“Shit.” I mutter.  
On the bright side this is the kind of fearlessness I had decided upon back at school, so I shut the door and continue what I started.  
“Hello! If you can hear me could you materialise or w-whatev-ver at the top of the stairs again? …Please?” should I use manners on a ghost? Is there enough of a person left to be insulted if I don’t? Well I guess I’ll find out. “I just w-want to talk to you.”  
I can’t quite believe my eyes when a patch of air on the landing starts to shimmer and warp, like the skin of a soap bubble, then resolves itself into the shape of the boy, this time wearing his glasses. They swallow his eyes up completely and I get the impression, when this effect combines with his drained skin, that I’m looking at a skull. He doesn’t speak.  
“Hi.” I try, weakly, pathetically.  
He doesn’t answer.  
“So…you’re dead, obviously, but those glasses were corporeal.”  
He watches me, his body language suggesting nothing but a position.   
“Can you talk?”  
He nods.  
“Yeah, w-when I asked that I w-was after an example of your ability to do so.”  
He just sits there.  
“Are you doing this for dramatic effect or is there a deeply rooted emotional av-version to speech?”  
I’ve become too frustrated too early. Of course I should cut him some slack, because he’s dead, but I really don’t want to because the fear of him kept me up all night and has made my day awful so far. He is the undoubtable cause of that nightmare earlier.  
I want to charge up the stairs and smack him a few times. I stay rooted to the welcome mat. “I need to know-w my father is safe. He’s a cancer surv-viv-vor, so it’d really suck if he beat that to be killed by a v-vengeful ghost.”  
Now I really want him to say something dry, like ‘do I look vengeful to you’ as he peers at me quizzically over the top of his glasses, anything, something that is human.   
We stare at each other in silence for another moment.  
“Are those your bones?”  
He nods again. Guilt creeps back as I wonder if I stumbled over a difficult issue with my jibe about talking. But me being me, I have to press at it again. “Why won’t you talk?”  
Then he talks “Because I’m not sure what to say to you.”  
His words are like a bucket of ice water, not because I have just heard the voice of a dead man, but because now that we’re speaking I somehow now that I won’t be able to forget this ever happened y writing it off as my stressed imagination and there will be no return to normal. “Perhaps you can explain to me w-why you’re here.”  
“Bold question.” his voice is so quiet, like he’s afraid to be heard, and deep as a bass drum “To ask a ghost how he died in the first minutes of your acquaintanceship.”  
Obviously he doesn’t want to talk about it. I’m guessing….a super traumatic murder, above the norm like smothering or stabbing, a Hollywood-style type of awful. Better steer clear of the subject for a while, unless I can think of a way to sneak it out of him.  
“So you are a ghost. Not a v-vagrant w-with the pow-wers of teleportation.” I hope he’ll smile.  
“Yes.” he doesn’t.  
“Then how-w come I could touch your glasses?”  
He shrugs “I wanted you to.”  
I take a step towards him. My heart buzzes, a hummingbird “And I suppose you w-wanted me to see you as well.”  
“I wanted you to know that I am here. I wasn’t sure how else I could introduce myself.”  
“Like this? A nice, normal chat?”  
“Normal,” he repeats, shaking his head “This is normal?”  
“Better than w-whatev-ver that w-was the other day.” I think of that near bro-hug with a shiver, although now I’m more confused and uncomfortable about it than I am scared. Hearing him speak made him human enough to cope with, like when the monster of the movie finally steps out of the shadows to pursue the heroes; it’s not as bad as you thought it would be.   
“Ah. Yes. I can only apologise for that…I wanted to reassure you…”  
Oh wow. He’s shy. “You’re shy aren’t you?”  
My suspicions are confirmed by the way he draws his knees a fraction closer to his chest, and turns his head in a way that makes me think he’s averting his eyes.  
“I’m …unaccustomed to people. I have been dead for a considerable amount of time.” he lowers his head as if he’s just admitted to a shameful crime.  
Unexpectedly, my chest tightens. I really really hope he isn’t lying to earn my trust then manipulate me, because I am actually feeling something close to sympathy for this undead beefcake and getting sympathy from Eridan S Ampora happens about as frequently as a solar eclipse. Apparently that’s one of the characteristics of the disorder, a lack of empathy. But the sight of him curling into himself like a scared kitten makes me want to hug him. At least pat him awkwardly on the back and tell him he’ll be alright. He doesn’t seem the type to burst into tears on a stranger’s shoulder though. God I hope he isn’t. I haven’t got a fucking clue what to do when people start crying and I usually end up berating them for letting their emotions leak.  
“Listen, are you gonna ask for somethin’, y’know like a proper burial?”  
“I’d ask that you don’t touch my bones, please. I need those.”  
“W-what for?”  
“To remain in this world.”  
“W-why w-would you w-want to?”   
“If I fade away as I am then I’m likely to end up in oblivion,” he shifts uncomfortably.  
I can feel him wanting to clam up “Does Heaven exist?”   
He shrugs. Hair falls into his face whenever he does that “I suppose it does. I mean, I wasn’t given a manual to guide me through this…mess.”  
“Meanin’ that thin’ about obliv-vion is a stab in the dark?”  
“No.”  
I raise an eyebrow “W-who told you? Are you getting’ this from films?”  
“No.”  
We’re down to monosyllables. This is great. There are so many questions I want, no NEED to ask him now, about Heaven and Hell and if there’s any chance I can meet God and punch him in the face. But he’s skittish, unsure of himself and of me. From what he’s said so far I can guess he has been conscious of being dead for a long time, possibly, and this is an unnerving possibility, as long as my family has owned this house. There may have been more than three people in this house from the first day. Suddenly, my blood is singing and I feel the need to cross my arms over my chest, my mind running back over everything he might have watched I thought was private.   
“Are you just shy,” the change in my tone causes him to dip his head further “Or are you feelin’ guilty about somethin’?”  
“I’m not what you’re thinking.” he takes off his glasses for the first time and looks me dead in the eye. This time I can meet his eyes without a ringing headache “I am trapped here, you know, and despite being a prisoner I assure you I am not alleviating my boredom with whatever unsavoury fixations on you or the rest of your family that you imagine.”  
“So, w-what, you lost all sexual desire when you died?”  
His face actually lights up with blush. “Something like that. At any rate, even if I did still feel a need to…to…do things like that I wouldn’t use your family as an outlet.”  
I’m caught between the satisfaction of making a cute guy blush, the way my flesh crawls as I consider everything he could have heard and watched and just a dash of incredulity at the fact that I am worried about a ghost perving off of us. I’ve made him feel uncomfortable. I have to draw him back in somehow, but without over-stepping my boundaries, and at the moment I have no idea what those are.  
“What’s your name?” there we go. That’s a simple, innocent question.  
Even this he’s reluctant to give up. He seems to struggle for a moment, although his face is blank.  
“Equius Zahhak.” he finally says.  
“Well, hello Equius Zahhak,” I put on a smile “Nice to formally meet you, at last.”  
He doesn’t smile back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a feeling some people will be shaking their heads over Equius's characterisation here, but please keep in mind that this is an AU where he is removed from the social situation which gives him power over other people, but he still has his debilitating physical issues and social awkwardness. Also he's been dead for an unhealthy amount of time. These combined factors are gonna wreak absolute havoc on his self-confidence and his image of himself, right? Of course that's not to say we're going to end up with a slightly sweatier version of Tavros, so just bear with.  
> While I'm here I'd like to address the issue of Eridan's speech if that's bothering anybody so far: his 'w' and 'v' quirks are stutters in this universe and don't always effect his speech. The thing where he misses his 'g's are like the same thing, it's just a speech quirk that doesn't always apply to him.  
> Wow that was a long note. If you got through that then go reward yourself with a cookie, or something healthier like raspberries.


	8. All that remains follows me to school

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to apologise for my inactivity. These last two weeks or so finally moved out of my house, took a transatlantic flight to South Carolina, took a week-long trip to the beach for a family reunion, and now I am in North Carolina at my cousins' house. This chapter was written in literally the plushest hotel room I have ever been in, from Raleigh. It ended up being extra long because I have to make up for some lost time, so you may want to go to the bathroom before you start this, as you'll be here a while.

I was born nearly eighteen years ago on a day that most of the nation already celebrated, though they did so with chocolate and copious amounts of salubrious activities, a day when more babies were conceived than produced. February 14th, making me a Valentine’s day baby and an Aquarius, if that’s at all important. Today is January 19th. In less than a month I will be eligible to vote, a legally recognised adult and most significantly, permitted by the law to fuck.  
I never understood the hype around the ‘sweet sixteen’. What does being sixteen qualify you to do, apart from drive? Perhaps the ‘sweet sixteen’ thing was started up by parents who grew tired of their daughters complaining about the lack of fuss made over their age, who decided to throw them a bash to tide them over until they were ready for the delicious, illicit things that accompany turning eighteen.  
Or maybe the sixteen thing comes from the fact that the average eighteen year old doesn’t have much, let alone enough, time to enjoy themselves with the weight of finals, jobs, college and vicious peer pressure, then all those other responsibilities that get lumped on you when you hit that age, like adult bus fares and shit. Sixteen year olds have the time to make a fuss. Eighteen year olds do not.  
I used to be one of those kids whose schedule was happily jam-packed with extra -curricular activities and meetings with friends. In my mind, I never stopped being that kid, but then again I haven’t been in my right mind for a while. Everyone goes through a crisis in high school at some point. I assumed I had used up my ‘drama points’ early in life, with Pa’s healthy and She Who Shall Not Be Named’s abandonment, so I thought I would be immune to the meltdowns I watched bring my classmates to their knees. Even with my prima-donna personality.  
But as it turns out life rarely conforms to the plans you have set out for yourself. Your peers are not people whose lives you can decide for them and sometimes they move on before you’re ready for them to. I wonder if it was this revelation, the sudden violent shock I felt when I realised I couldn’t control Feferi that knocked me for a loop, or the speed at which our contact has been dissolving. Childhoods like mine don’t exactly make stable, happy well-adjusted individuals, so people like me need only a few nudges to fall apart. Apparently. Those nudges may need to come from a person close to you, but I wouldn’t know.  
So yes. My eyes are finally open, sort of. Cracked open, not wide and staring. At the moment I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at but I am definitely sure I am looking this time, not going through the motions while my distant mind combs over memories, searching for the numerous instances where I went wrong and inventing pointless solutions that may have changed what has been the outcome. Funny how the wake-up call I need turned out to be a ghost.  
In sixteen days I will turn eighteen. By the time I finally reach this hallowed age, the likelihood is that this ghost, Equius, will not have buggered off into the Great Unknowable Beyond out of courtesy, or a sheer miracle. He will still be here, the silent spectator in the shadows, a brother I nor my father never knew I had. Might as well get to know him. I hate being around strangers. It’s hard not to imagine what they’re thinking of me and usually my mind jumps to the worst conclusions, so often my only solution is to get away from them. In this case I’d have to move out of the house, and I’m not due to start at my college until the summer.

The night began swiftly, but I took no notice of it, owing to the fact that I had finally managed to slip off to sleep. A long, glorious, deep nap taken basically at the feet of the ghost. I guess I was so relieved to have finally talked to him and made him a just that little bit human, the tension rushed out of me and took the rest of my energy with it. He was gone when Pa woke me up.  
I think I’ve been scaring Pa. He remarked on my strange choice of a bed casually enough, but I have watched him being afraid and trying to hide it so many times in my life I can tell immediately…when I pay attention. Obviously I have not this past year otherwise I might have noticed he looks at me like I’m about to drop dead on the spot most of the time.  
“Don’t w-worry about me,” I told him, stretching, with a smile I felt “I’m just a wee bit bored. Bed just didn’t seem appealin’.”  
“So ya procured half yer bed and made a bed on the landing?”  
“Basically.” Up to that point I hadn’t noticed I was covered in a blanket from my bed and that my head was resting on a pillow taken from it too. Bless his coagulated heart.  
But I was still afraid of him, which is why I didn’t go to the basement when Pa wasn’t looking to let him know I appreciated him taking care of me, because I wasn’t quite sure that I did. I’m still not. I stare at my cereal as if the milk and soggy flakes contain all the answers. He knows me well if he has spent the time we have lived in this house watching me. He knows Pa and Cronus and Ahab well too. No, I’m still super creeped out. No matter the spin I try to put on this situation, it remains supremely creepy.   
Cute, maybe. Caring, probably, since he tucked me in, although that may have well been a calculated move designed to garner some trust/sympathy. Dead, definitely, which is only slightly more creepy than the fact that he has been here for ALMOST MY WHOLE LIFE AND I NEVER EVEN KNEW.  
OH MY GOD.  
THAT IS NOT OK.  
THAT IS REALLY NOT OK.   
I DO NOT WANT TO ACCEPT THAT.  
But it’s not his fault…so he says. The only guarantee I have that he hasn’t been getting his rocks off over us is his own and I haven’t got a single reason to trust him yet. In what way do I expect him to prove himself? Do I need him to do all my chores and homework? Do I need him to whip up some ghostly healing power and banish any lurking traces of Pa’s cancer? Do I need him to pull me from a burning building? He’s right. There is no guide to this. But it’s happening so I have to figure something out.  
“Pa.”  
“Eridan.”  
“W-what do you do if you can’t figure out what somebody w-wants, but you need to because you’re sorta stuck with them?”  
He peers at me over his paper. “Am I forbidden to ask who this is about?”  
“Yes.”  
“Alright then,” he puts the paper to the side and folds his hands on the table, assuming the lecture position “How close are ya to this mysterious person?”  
“Just met, but still stuck with them.”  
His expression changes a little, some of the worry going out of it. He thought we were talking about Sol, who he has been worried for since his brother’s death, in case I’m going too hard on him. “How long is this relationship gonna last?”  
“Unknow-wn.”  
“That sucks.”  
Sighing, my eyes stray in the direction of the basement, over my shoulder “Doesn’t it just.”  
“If yer stuck with a person ya don’t know very well for a long time, ya should get to know them. The trick is to get to know them well and treat them a bit like a bomb that could go off at any second, just don’t let them know that ya are. Then start relaxin’ a little once ya know what they’re like.”  
Feeling a cramp, I rub the back of my neck “Yes, but how do I figure out what they want?”  
Pa shrugs “Sometimes ya won’t know until they tell ya. What do ya know about this person already that might give ya a clue about what they want?”  
“I know-w…” he’s dead and alone and lives with us and is probably the guy who tripped down the stairs “This person is v-v-v-very enigmatic and lonely.” I wince at how badly I screw up the ‘v’. My stutter is all over the place lately and only gets worse when I think about things that irritate me.  
Pa is clearly more and more interested in this person as the conversation progresses, but he doesn’t want to press me…afraid I might clam up “So…when someone’s enigmatic they usually don’t talk a lot, yeah? They have a reason, maybe because it’s in their character or because they have an agenda to hide, but not necessarily the skill to hide it.”  
Equius seems awkward to me. He may be shy. He may be hiding. If I want to trust my rusty intuition, then I think he’s straddling the two. “This person is pretty shy naturally, I think, although they sure as heck hav-v-ve a lot of things to hide from me for a good reason.”  
“Are they smart?”  
“…yeah. I can tell.”  
“Yer getting’ into this.”  
I realise I have a big, smug smile on my face and I have to laugh “I am, yeah. This guy’s been on my nerv-ves for a w-w-w-w…” this ‘w’ clearly doesn’t want to go anywhere, so I give up on it “…long time.” letters will do that to me. Turn around and jump back down my throat, leaving my tongue stuck on the first syllable until people are staring and my face is flushed with embarrassment.   
“Who is he?”  
“An enigma.”  
Pa is curious. It’s been a while since I’ve been this animated.   
And he just had to go and do a dad thing “Is he cute?”  
“PA. NO.” I push my sloshing bowl towards him, shaking my head and stand up “You w-were doin’ some good fathering until that!”  
“Has Sollux got some stiff competition then?”  
My face is on fire “No! It’s nothing close to that at all! And I don’t like Sol!”  
“Why do you always call him ‘Sol’ then, instead of ‘that bastard’ or something less affectionate?” he calls after me as I shoot upstairs.  
“BECAUSE HE CALLS ME ED!!”  
God. Fathers. 

All things considered, things were going pretty well until Equius showed up in the boy’s bathroom. To his credit he is just as scared and surprised to find himself there as I am, and when I scream in shock he flinches backwards and disappears, melting right through the solid door of a cubicle. I stumble into the row of sinks where I was drying my hands when he showed up over my shoulder in the mirror. The fact that there is a ghost at home had almost been forgotten in the chaos of this morning, which included a pop quiz in the double science and a nasty surprise essay lesson in Spanish and the shirt that Dave is wearing today which has a collar that slips down over his chest every time he bends over, I was pretty distracted.  
Up to this point.  
“WHAT?!” I shriek.  
“I DON’T KNOW!” his shouting voice, issuing from the cubicle, is like a stage whisper.  
Clapping a hand over my hammering heart, I dash to the door and poke my head outside, checking the hall is still empty. Then I storm to his hiding place and throw the door open. He shies away from me, into the corner made by the wall joining the ceiling a good 8 feet off the ground.  
“How-w-w did you get here?” I hiss.  
“I’m not sure.” He says, bewildered.  
“W-w-w-…no. That can’t be right. You can’t not know-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-” I pause and actually slap myself “Tell me.”  
His shoulders are sinking into the plaster “I’m just as confused as you are.”  
“I’m not confused I’m bloody liv-v-vid!” and shouting again “You can’t just follow-w me to school w-w-whene-ver you bloody feel like it, you, you bloody stalker tw-w-wat!” I whirl away in disgust and kick at the sinks.  
The ghost has invaded my refuge. It’s bad enough he can watch me at home, but we’re going to have some serious problems if he thinks he can start popping up all over the place.   
“If you think you can start jumping out at me like a bloomin’ mini Slenderman, then I am gonna set a fuckin’ exorcist on you! I will get a priest on your ass! I’m not fuckin’ kiddin’ I’m a practicin’ Catholic (a half lie and I’m sure he knows it) and I can do shit like that!”  
“Please stop shouting.” he says quietly.  
An outrageous thought pops into my head “Did-did you put one of your fuckin’ filthy bones in my goddamned bag?”  
“No.”   
But I’m already kneeling and dumping the contents on the sticky floor and spreading out the textbooks and papers like fans, probing the corners and pockets of my bag. My fingers graze a smooth object. I pull it out. I have pulled out what looks to be a piece of a spine, specifically a single well preserved vertebrae.  
I glare at Equius.  
Equius looks back, his glasses sliding down over wide, surprised eyes “Who moved me?”  
“Oh no you’re not wigglin’ outta this one!”  
The bone clutched in a fist, I force one of the windows open and prepare to throw the vertebrae out the window. Faster than I could have imagined anything can move he has grabbed my wrist in a vice and is dragging me away from the window. His face is dark.  
“I’d prefer it you didn’t spread my remains across the city. At this point they are the only reminder of my former humanity, so I may become something you don’t want to meet if you do so…or be responsible for creating.”  
“Wow. So many w-words.”  
He lets me go. I rub my arm, giving him the most resentful look I can muster while keeping the curses at bay. He left a red clear red handprint on my wrist. Fuck me, that hurts.  
“What do you w-want me to do w-with your bloomin’ spine then?” I stuff it in my pocket before he can move to take it away, in case I need some leverage if things get nasty.  
I’ll admit this: I hadn’t thought he has it in him to leave a print like that, or basically assault me. I thought of him as kind of meek, but as I look at him now, glowering at me, about two feet above my eye level (his legs have sort of collapsed into this opaque tail of mist like a fairy tale genie) and it hits me that again, I am dealing with a thing that I can’t control and this time, if he hurts me, it won’t be some traumatising emotional shit. He may kill me.  
“Stop that.” he averts his eyes.  
“What?”  
“I won’t touch you again.” he crosses his arms “I’m sorry….you scared me.”  
“You scared me, poppin’ up in that fuckin’ mirror.”  
“I was referring to the bone. Please don’t treat my skeleton as if it’s expendable.”  
Great. Now I feel guilty “Oh. Right, w-well whatev-ver. Let’s just agree not to get up in each other’s grille from now on.”  
“Pardon?”  
“No touching.”  
“Gladly.”  
And now I’m offended “How the fuck did you get here anyw-way? If you didn’t put the bone then who w-was it? Do you expect me to believ-ve it just got up and walked from the basement into my bag?”  
Equius’s face has morphed back into that expressionless mask I have a feeling will be the fucking bane of our relationship “As I said, I’m as confused as you are.”  
Suddenly the door flies open and we both jump out of our skin- I fly about two feet off the floor and Equius dives back into the cubicle.  
“What are you doing?” Karkat narrows his eyes at me “Why are you standing on the sink? You’re not trying to pee in there are you?”  
“Fuck no! Can you not do that? That sneaking Texan ninja thing you learned from Dave, please?”  
He throws his hands up in surrender “Hey, hey it was you who did the Matrix thing into the sink not me. Seriously, you need to get back to the self-defence classes Eridan. You need to kick the shit out of something.”  
“I have never seen anything quite like that before.” mutters Equius from his stall.  
Shivering, Karkat does a 360 around the room “Did you hear that?”  
“W-what?” I put on my innocent face, stepping gingerly down from the sink. “And for the record I never took any self-defence classes, I only copied what Fef taught me.”  
Karkat is immediately distracted by the mention of the Forbidden Name “Excuse me?” from me of all people, he who made it the Forbidden Name.  
“Bless you.”  
“I didn’t sneeze.” he shakes his head. “You make no sense to me.”  
Then he heads for the stall Equius is in. He pushes open the door and doesn’t seem to sense the six foot tall ghost sitting on top of the toilet lid, who scrambles through a wall to get out of his way as he takes some of the toilet tissue from the dispenser. Oddly enough I have to wrestle a laugh back. Straightening up, Karkat rubs his arms and shivers again “God these stingy hog humpers can’t turn the fucking heating on in the middle of January?”  
“Hog humpers.” repeats a disgusted Equius from his new, safe position floating over my head “Is this Karkat? I haven’t seen him in a long time…his vocabulary has certainly grown, even if he hasn’t.”  
I snort so hard something green comes out of my nose. Gagging, Karkat throws a wad of tissue at me.  
“Wipe your face off. Also, don’t come down for a while because Sol’s puking his guts up and he doesn’t need the extra reason your face will give him.”  
Scrubbing at my nose, I flash him a thumbs-up “You got it, boss.”  
He leaves.  
“He noticed me.”  
“I think you’re safe.”  
“He heard me.”  
“No he didn’t.”  
“It happens constantly. I say something and a living person hears me, but their brain doesn’t know how to interpret the voice of a dead man so my voice turns into a rustle or a thumping noise or something of the like.”  
I shudder “So when I’m hearin’ noises at night or when I’m alone, I’m hearing you talk?”  
The ghost nods.  
“That is beyond disturbin’. W-what are you sayin’ anyway?”  
The ghost shrugs.  
“Do you talk to yourself?”  
“Up to this point I had no one else to talk to.”  
Tragic and mysterious at first glance, awkwardly endearing at second. I’m beginning to think we might just be able to squeak by together, if there ends up needing to be a ‘together’.  
“I’m gonna be late for class.” I set about re-packing by bag, and after a moment of thought, I wrap the vertebrae up in a bandana I have no I idea why I have and put it in my pocket “Just so you know-w you’re forcin’ me to do legitimately the weirdest most disturbing and unnatural thin’ I have ever done….yeah, you’re gonna have to give me more than that face, man, because I have no fuckin’ idea w-what you’re trying to communicate.”  
“Thank you.”  
Taken aback, I stare at the floor and clear my throat and mumble something indistinct. When I look up Equius is gone and the bone feels a little colder.  
“Are you in there?” I reach into my pocket and poke at him.  
“Yes.” says the bone.  
“Comfortable?” I stand up.  
“I have no need nor use for comfort.”   
“Ok, yeah sure, I mean are you gonna be able to stay like that until you get a chance to get out?”  
There is a pause “I will be comfortable for the foreseeable future. What are you planning?”  
I shoulder my bag “You’re gonna spend the day in my pocket and you’re gonna behave-ve yourself or so help me God I will be the cause of your second death.”  
“Sounds fair.”


	9. All that remains is....confusing

What I didn’t factor into my spur of the moment, ultimate genius plan is the temperature of Equius’s bone. It’s like carrying a block of ice around in my jacket and in no time at all the cold has seeped through the handkerchief, my shirt and jacket and bites at my stomach unrelentingly. I’m afraid if I put it in my bag it will be damaged or smashed and he’ll lose his…what did he call it….focus? His focus or something and therefore his tie to this world. He may just go pinging back to the basement to the rest of his bones or he may disappear into oblivion until Judgement Day. I don’t want to be responsible for the latter and I definitely don’t want to deal with him should the former happen.  
So in the jacket pocket he stays.  
“Can you turn the temperature up?” I hiss to my midsection.  
“Nope.” it replies.   
“But you didn’t try. How-w do you know if you didn’t try?”  
A pause, then “I tried. Did it work?”  
“Nope.”  
“Well then we’re stuck.”  
Fearing someone will notice if I carry on any longer, I mutter to him “I can’t talk to you like this, so if you need something just talk to me and I’ll figure out a way to get a reply out, yeah?”  
“Alright.”  
Hearing him talk is strange. His voice is clear and only soft because he talks that way, and I can hear him as if he is a live person standing beside me. At the same time, and this doesn’t make a lick of sense, his voice blurs. A computer glitch blur, but with something eating away at it like static and that static is silence. When he has finished a sentence, I am so aware of the silence after it I am dizzy.  
He belongs somewhere else - in the void. The void knows it and it is waiting close by for a time when it can sneak up and claim him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't really know how to continue this, after that stopping point. Sorry for the short chapter.


	10. All that remains is stolen

You know that moment when the hero who just barrelled over the edge of the cliff clutching his enemy’s throat grabs the edge of the cliff and hauls himself over the side and the clustered, useless few who watched him go down burst into tears and applause and clamour to help him up and hug him? That is a little bit like what I experience when I join my group at our usual table this lunch time. Their shock makes me want to spread my arms and shout “Yes! It is I, Eridan, returned from the front line!”  
Seriously. I have never seen Jade’s jaw drop so low and John actually jumps up and hugs me- then pulls away quickly.  
“Oh my God you’re freezing!” he cries, hugging me at a different angle so he doesn’t make contact with my cold stomach.  
“Hi…John.” I say “So…do you guys mind if I sit here?”  
“We thought you were dead.” says Jade.  
“There was a funeral and everything.” adds Dave “Black ties, sad music, roses on the coffin and afterward we all got blitzed at a bar. But if Eridan’s here then who did we bury?” at some point during his sentence he found a flash light in his bag, and at the end he switches it on underneath his chin which creates a ghoulish effect uncomfortable similar to the lighting that clings to Equius’s face.  
I take this to be permission and squeeze in between Kanaya and Karkat.   
The anxiousness I felt at returning to this ritual of eating with them after I don’t know how many weeks alone is overwhelmed quickly by the relief that I worked up the courage and sense to do it. I missed them so much and I didn’t realise how much I really did until I am back with them properly.  
Karkat slaps me on the shoulder, fondly I hope “And where have you been?”  
“The bathroom.” stuffing ghosts in my jacket.  
“I meant for the past four damned weeks!” he snaps. “I, we, everybody, we need you here and- stuff! We need you here to be the thing…”  
“I believe what Karkat is trying to articulate is that we missed you terribly, dear.” Kanaya comes to his rescue.  
Unsure of how to explain myself I shrug “Nah. I just…y’know.” I owe them more, but I just don’t know what to say.  
“We know.” Rose pats me on the shoulder awkwardly. It’s rather adorable to see her trying to put someone at ease, a bit like seeing a dog trying to walk in socks.  
“You dick.” adds Dave. He smiles and Dave never smiles. He says it’s against the family rules to corrupt the ‘Strider face’ (apparently the family term for a poker face, which he wears constantly) with emotions.  
“We were wondering when you were going to join planet earth again.” John says.  
Jade kicks him under the table “Nasty pop quiz this morning, huh?”  
Wow. That was easy.  
I slide into the conversation almost effortlessly. For the past few weeks I have missed out on a lot, not being around them due to a self-imposed isolation I was barely aware I had created, but everyone makes an effort to include me.  
Despite the cold bone in my pocket, I’m relaxed and feeling kind of normal.  
This is my group, my friends, the people that have helped to shape me, to help me grow…they did a kind of shitty job, didn’t they? If they produced this kind of guy who falls into such a deep hole of self-pitying grief about one ‘friend’ screwing him over he forgets the remaining six. And Sol. Speaking of Sol, where is that asshole, I ask?  
“He went home.” Karkat tells me “Puking his poor guts up.”  
“All over my shoes.” says Dave, which means he’s concerned.  
Sol went home? Sollux Captor who has to be too sick to get out of bed to miss a day of school? Sol Captor who would rather risk collapsing at school than missing an ‘important’ lesson? Indeed, he must have been puking his guts up to agree to being sent home. Well if I have a ghost tamodachi today I guess Sol has full permission to be just as weird. Plus I can’t say that I’m not a little bit satisfied with the knowledge that he is suffering.   
Lunchtime is spent talking about utterly pointless junk. We talk about sports and ask Kanaya how it’s going on the football team, for which she is the only girl playing and the quarterback. We talk about irritating teachers. We talk about homework. We talk about college applications and how we hope our grades are good enough and that all that charity work we can claim to have done doesn’t make us look like fakers. We talk about how the summer is coming up and how concerned we are for the two resident semi-albino’s skins will fare.   
Of course I don’t forget I have a ghost in my pocket. I don’t feel like a need to. He’s here. He’s not doing any harm. Sure, my wrist still hurts, but I did try to throw him out of a three story window. In fact I think he might even be enjoying their company, mine at a stretch. He should know them too, from watching me at play. There were days when Karkat came over almost every weekend, when John snuck me out of the house at the wee hours of the morning via my second-story window for some teenage shenanigans, when Dave would let himself in with the spare key under a flowerpot, wander right in and sit in front of the TV with me and ask what we were watching…when they came and went without feeling a wall there, a reason they shouldn’t.   
Hell, Fef practically lived in my house.  
If Eq paid any attention at all then he knows these kids, their movie and snack preferences and little bits of trivia about their home life. He might have even missed them too.

Just when I think I might get through this day without a hitch, the universe sends me a subtle sign that I have no quite worked through enough of my bad karma to pull off a stunt like this without ramifications. Which is to say, the blasted vertebrae goes missing after PE.  
I left my jacket inside my locker, my locked locker, folded up and neat and tidy with the promise that I’d be back if Equius was good and if he was bad I’d leave him in there forever. We have to change into clothes we don’t mind soaking in our own sweat and the sweat of whoever collides with us during the lesson, as people so often do even when we’re playing strictly no-contact sports. Every one changes.   
We have the kind of PE teacher that goes batshit crazy if she notices a single person on the register isn’t present who hasn’t been excused already by an absence or a sick note. I will forever remember the day Dave tried to cut class and ended up climbing to the very top of a four-story tree in his efforts to avoid the PE teacher’s pursuit. He was perfectly comfortable at that height. The teacher wasn’t. The fire department was called to get her down and some ass took a picture so the image of our 200 pound gorilla of a teacher was immortalised in the action of screaming her head off, broken over a fireman’s shoulder like the barrel of a shotgun, and Dave a few branches above reading a book peacefully.   
The point is: everyone is in the class on pain of death.  
There is not a soul alive in this room who would brave her wrath, not even Dave, not again, and with the room locked, that means someone deliberately broke into the room to steal from me. Sometimes a random asshole will pick the locks on the lockers to rob things like girls’ changes of underwear, phones and wallets, but as I look around with a panic rising in my chest, I don’t see any of the other boys reacting as if the contents of their locker have been disturbed.   
There’s no way I can raise a stink about it being missing either. This crime is too specific to be a coincidence. The one day I end up with the one thing that could incriminate me as a…a…an accomplice of a ghost disappears during the one lesson I’ll be leaving it alone, in a locked room of all the settings.  
Frustration claims me and I punch my locker, causing the guys on either side of me to jump. I have been targeted. Was I sloppy concealing the piece of bone? That would explain it if it was one of the guys in my group, but Dave, Karkat and John are all in my class, and the girls are tied up in intense science courses none of them would dare to bunk just to investigate Eridan’s weirdness. It’s stupid even to think that they would go behind my back about something, even with the way I acted these past few months. Direct confrontation is our group policy when someone is caught acting sneaky or strange. I would totally get a talking to if one of them found out I had a human vertebra in my jacket pocket.  
Distracted by anger and the bone up to this point, I don’t notice my shirt is missing too until I grope around to put it on. Now who in the hell steals a guy’s ghost and shirt in the same fucking robbery? When I find this person, and you can fucking bet I will, I am gonna punch their lights out and rip their shirt right off, I don’t care about the gender. Then I’ll figure out a way to hug Equius and promise him that I never intend to leave him within a thief’s reach ever again.


	11. All that remains is still fucking missing and I'm gonna kill his kidnapper if I get my hands on the bastard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 10. Wow what a milestone, this fic is actually going places. With a plot and everything, although as to what that plot is , your guess is as good as mine dear readership. Unfortunately chapter 10 was a short thing, so I made 11 much longer, and much more eventful. Thank you to all those who have left kudos and bookmarks and comments. Seriously, we writes are so wildly insecure that it's like a pat on the head from God when someone leaves something like that.  
> It's just a little bit pathetic actually  
> Oh dammit I did not mean to write that like a plea for more. Well i dug a deep grave already, so I might as well go ahead and bury myself: disregard that part of the note. I only said the thanks. Nothing else. Jesus me, shut up.

With no other obvious options, I zip my jacket up over my bare chest and wait out the rest of the day, dropping my pen, missing questions, mishearing people and just generally devolving into a nervous wreck until the end of school, whereupon I dash to my locker in hopes of finding something in the way of a ransom note in my textbook locker, with a brief goodbye to my friends. I hope in vain. Nothing waits for me, not at school and not at home. What point is there in going home without him? God, when did I get this attached to him? I don’t know when his welfare became my concern, after all he was an unwelcome tag-along at school today, and my wrist wears a clear bracelet of a bruise in the shape of human fingers, but I am genuinely scared for him.  
I don’t know who has him. I don’t know if they do have him at all, or if he has managed to snap back to the basement where the rest of his skeleton rests. His kidnapper probably has at least a vague idea of what they took seeing as they went to such an effort to take the bone. Maybe they just saw the bone and have no idea it’s haunted, but I somehow doubt it.  
The most sensible choice is to wait after school as the students who have no business in school after lessons go, to watch the study groups assemble and the loners in the library get hunched up over their usual computers, to wait until everyone who has a reason to be here has gone to their reason then see who is left. It makes sense to me that the thief should remain here, like me. What cause do they have to take the bone if they’re not going to try to extort me in some way?  
So I walk through the halls of several floors looking purposeful rather than lost for the benefit of the crowds. Gradually I am weaving through less of a crush. Then I avoid the eyes of only a few people. Then the few classrooms in use have been filled and I am on my own.  
At a loss, I wander for five minutes more, than I finally decide I should check places like the library and the gym for people who react oddly to me. If I’m lucky someone waits for me and will approach once they see me.  
I’m helpless. I’m at the mercy of some cruel mystery robber, they could do anything once they identify themselves to submit me to their control. Well…not quite anything but they certainly have a serious bargaining chip. Again I find myself asking: when did I start caring about the undead creep so much? And then another significant question: if our situations were reversed, would he do this for me?  
Why the hell am I even asking that? Theoretical situations don’t matter. This is what is happening and for once I’m going to do the right thing, not what suits me best, which would be to abscond and lay low until the kidnapper sees it fit to introduce themselves. Fuck that. I’m gonna be proactive. I’m gonna act like I have a shred of morality in me, one that I’ll willingly use, and I’m gonna stop imagining my ghost stalking the halls of my school in search for the mystery stalker, because that’s only going to go sour in my mind as I watch him abandon the search and dissuade myself from wanting to look. None of that shit anymore.  
The library raises no suspicions. Neither does the gym, the media room or any of the other typical lurking places. I pass by the empty classrooms, waiting for a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, for Equius to float out and tell me he just got a little bit lost.  
After a half hour of searching, I have exhausted the possibility on every other floor, so I reluctantly head up to the roof. Rain began while I walked, the kind of light rain that saturates you within minutes, but you don’t notice that it has until you start to shiver. It blurs out a lot of the landscape up there. In the distance the skyscrapers of the down-town area are tooth-pick sized smudges. The local church is the size of my fist and in the veil of rain, roughly that shape as well.  
There is one thing I can see quite clearly at the far end of the roof. The horrible neon yellow marks it out against the greys immediately.  
“Of course it’s you.” I say.  
Sollux turns to face me “Took your fucking time.”  
“W-w-w-w…the hell? The hell d’you think you’re doin’?” I advance with quick, angry steps “You go pawin’ through my locker and lift my stuff? I thought you were floored with a stomach bug at home!”  
He sneers “Well if it makes you feel better I have felt fucking awful all day, and you know why.”  
I stop short “Where is he?”  
He holds the vertebra out to me, producing it from his pocket. The bone hasn’t been damaged in any way I can see, but I still snatch it out of his hands and turn it over in mine frantically.  
“He talks to you right? He won’t talk to me.” Sol stuffs his hands back in his pockets.  
“No, I don’t think he would!” I snap.  
With Equius stowed safely in my jacket again, relief washes over me. The worst of the immediate emergency is over. I just have to figure out how to deal with Sol, which is no new problem.  
I glare at him again and this time he shrinks a little, although I can see he’s determined to be bold.  
“I didn’t mean to scare him, but I knew you weren’t gonna talk to me about it unless I forced you to…I didn’t hurt him. I just asked him to come out a few times then I left him alone.”  
There’s this strange light in his eyes. Desperation to be believed, I think, but not about his claim that he hasn’t hurt Equius. I can find that out easily enough.  
“Are you alright?” I address the bone.  
The bone addresses me “I have been better.” he sounds a little shaken, but not in pain.  
“Big day for you, huh?” I laugh, then remember Sol is there “As for you, I don’t know w-w-what you’re tryin’ to pull here, but if you touch Equius again-”  
“Equius?” his lisp butchers the name “THE Equius, from the murders-”  
“Yes. Him.” snaps Equius. The temperature drops by a few degrees and I can see my breath in the air.  
Torn between wanting so badly for just a few details about Equius’s past and wanting to kick the shit out of Sol for his stunt, I chose the latter after a brief inner battle.  
“It’s none of your fuckin’ business, is it?”  
Sol shrugs “Not really. I….I don’t know. I just wanted to talk to you guys.”  
No. No, no, no bad I have to crush that little spark of pity for Sol, the way he slumps his shoulders, the torture he’s practically wearing on his face right now, before it catches and turns into a fully-fledged emotion. Great, now I’m curious. “How-w did you know-w-w about him?”  
“If I tell you you have to promise you won’t tell anyone else. This isn’t a promise you can break like a dick later to get back at me. You have to swear this on your grandma’s grave or something.”  
Intrigued more than angry now, I shake my head “Fine, fine.”  
“I mean it.”  
“Yeah I got that.”  
“I see dead people.”  
“That’s not funny.”  
“He is telling the truth.”  
“No, Eq, he’s quoting a movie.”  
“No I’m not!”  
“That was not his intention.”  
I throw my hands up “Big fuckin’ deal, Sol, I can see Eq too!”  
“Not until he chose to show himself to you, right?” Sol says fiercely “He watched you for years without a word, didn’t you Equius? Every fucking time I went to your house I knew he was there. I couldn’t see you, but I knew you were there and the only reason I didn’t say something is because I knew you were a good one.”  
“Of course he is!” now how come I didn’t know I knew that before? So many things are wrong with me.  
“You don’t believe me.” he mutters, sullen, defeated.  
“I believe you about Eq, but I don’t believe….” I can’t finish the sentence.  
Sol has always been weird. He is forever focussed on something else. Ever since we were little, he has been the hardest to scare, the bravest in the dark and the unknown. He maintained he didn’t believe a word of the paranormal and that everyone who did was trying to sell something. And yet…he hates to visit hospitals, and could barely be persuaded in there to see his brother even on his deathbed, he hates cemeteries, he skips movie days when the theme is horror. It’s the only way him being able to see, or sense, Equius too makes sense.  
“Bloody Mary.” I whisper.  
Sol shudders violently “What?”  
“Bloody Mary.” I repeat, comprehension like a dawn in my mind. His worst, most mortal fear is the woman of the infamous urban legend.  
“Don’t say her name again!” he spits “Don’t, please don’t!”  
“Did you see her?” one time at a sleepover John suggested we try out the ritual and Sol threatened to leave if her name was mentioned again. He almost never looks into mirrors. From what I’ve seen of his house, there are next to none up anywhere, and those that are up have a curtain you have to pull back if you want to use them. At night, he brushes his teeth in the kitchen sink and pees outside, and he always takes his showers in the morning.  
He nods miserably “That’s how I found out what I am. I was playing. I was just five. I did it because I thought it wouldn’t work and it didn’t for two days, then one day I went into Dad’s room and there was a woman in the full-length mirror but no one was in front of it, and there was blood all over her jeans and her white shirt and her eyes were dangling by the nerves from her shirt collar and…” his voice breaks off into a sob.  
“Hug him.” mutters Equius “Whatever it is people do for comfort…”  
Awkwardly, I pull him into my arms and give him a quick squeeze. Before I can pull away he hugs me back tightly, pushing my face into his neck because of the height difference. My protests are muffled.  
“After that…” he continues, trying to get his crying under control “I see them everywhere. People standing where they died. Sometimes they look like they did after they got their fatal injury…there’s this one woman in front of my house, in the middle of the road. Her head is squished. There are marks in her face like what you see of a shoe’s sole in a stepped-on piece of gum. She watches me all the time. She always faces my room. I can’t sleep with the blinds open. They just watch me…”  
A shiver runs up my spine as a horrible thought pops into my mind “In school-”  
“Some kid died of a drug overdose in the boy’s bathroom on the second floor. He sits on the floor of the stall and when I shut the door on him, he just presses his bloated face to the floor and stares at me under the door.”  
I try to make light of the situation, more for my benefit than his because I’m about to freak out too “Now I know why you never use that bathroom.”  
“A girl hung herself in the gym. She hangs on her noose on the basketball goal post.”  
With an effort, I push him out to arm’s length and force him to look me in the eye “Pull yourself together!”  
He sniffs and hands me his glasses so he can wipe his eyes “Jesus, I’m so sorry, I’ve just never told anyone before.”  
“What, not ev-ven Fef, your soul mate?” I mutter.  
“No.”  
“If you expect me to be touched by this-”  
“Eridan.” says Equius “I think he expects you to be understanding of the hardships he has experienced because of his unusual condition, considering you are the only person who has told about it.”  
“But I’m-”  
“No I don’t! Eridan is never understanding about anything, it’s always Eridan’s woes and Eridan’s fuck-ups and no one else matters.” retorts Sol. “You should know that if you’ve been stuck under his roof for most of his life.”  
If a bone could nod wearily, then Equius would be doing it “Oh yes, I realise that, but we must make a few allowances since it’s a disorder.”  
“Can you guys not!”  
They’re not listening.  
“If it is of any comfort to you, then know that most ghosts can’t talk because it is beyond their limited faculties, as little more than shadows of the moment of their death.” says Equius. “They mean you no harm because the majority do not understand the concept of harm, let alone where they are. I would guess that the reason they look at you is because they are returning a stare.”  
“I wondered why they never…y’know, flipped their shit at me. You’re the first one I ever heard talk.”  
Equius materialises behind me. Clearly this is the first ghost Sol has seen who isn’t wearing their fatal injury. Pursing his lips, he tilts his head and examines Eq.  
“Can you touch people?”  
“Sometimes.” Eq prods me in the shoulder. His hand goes straight through me. “Sorry Eridan.”  
I grunt. That’s right Sol. Have your fun while you can. You’re officially on my shit list now.  
“How come you’re talking to Eridan now? Is it because he’s about to leave the house?”  
“If that were my reason, don’t you think I would have made contact with Cronus before he departed too?”  
Jesus man give him a fucking answer. I’m curious too.  
“How do I know you didn’t?”  
“You knew him. You know Eridan. You sensed immediately there was something…with Eridan. Don’t you think you would have noticed with Cronus too?”  
“I wasn’t stuck seeing Cronus almost every day.”  
“True.”  
“I’m gonna go sit over here.” I swing my legs over the ledge and sit on the edge of the roof, watching my legs kick in space about five stories above the ground. Vertigo makes the blood rush to my head, so I shake my head and cough and focus on the horizon. There is nothing between me and the ground at the moment, so it’s a good thing I’m not afraid of heights.  
They’re still talking.  
“I don’t get it? How come you don’t look-”  
“For a very long time I did look the way you imagine I should. But as you may have guessed I have had a lot of time to myself…to perfect the various tricks a ghost knows, I suppose. At least to alter my appearance in case one of the boys saw me.”  
“So that’s why you’re not bloody and stuff?”  
“Yes.”  
“How come I’ve never met any other ghosts like you?”  
“…I’m shy. I don’t know that I can speak for the rest of the undead community, but dying did not do much for my confidence.”  
“So what ghosts and snakes are like, the same? More afraid of me than I’m afraid of them?”  
“In my case. As I said, I cannot speak for the rest of the community.”  
The grounds are empty. Should be empty. No one can get into the school after hours without coming through the reception, where they have to show their ID to prove they’re not a creeper. The gates are all locked. The fence is high and topped with those sharp gothic spike thingies. No one should be able to scale those.  
There is a guy about my age standing on the front steps, looking up at me. From five stories up, I can’t see him very well. I squint and it’s like trying to make out an actor’s face while they’re on the stage and you’re at the back of the theatre.  
I don’t recognise him. He has no backpack, no books, no nothing to suggest he belongs here. He is dressed in a black T shirt and jeans, with a knit cap jammed over dark hair that appears curly. His eyes are just dark spots in the middle of his face from this distance. But I can see him smile.  
His white teeth flash and he waves. My heart skips a beat. I wave back to him, and Sol and Eq are still going on and on about the dead in our neighbourhood in the background.  
He feels wrong. That guy on the ground, he feels very very wrong. He feels like Equius feels, like an echo. A person’s reflection distorted so subtly I can’t tell what’s been changed or what bothers me, I can just tell they are not right, and this guy is so horribly wrong. I remember how I felt that night I slept under my bed armed with a bat, the fear, but that fear has been magnified by a factor of at least 10, so that I can’t hear Sol or Eq anymore, that the rest of the landscape dissolves into white and it’s only that guy standing down there, waving at me, and me waving back without wanting to.  
He stops. He puts his hands in his pockets. I stop. My arms go limp at my sides.  
Suddenly I’m violently wrenched backwards. Each of my arms has been grabbed and I’m being hauled back over the ledge onto the floor of the roof again.  
“What were you doing?!” shouts Sol.  
Sol has my right arm. Equius has my left, and my arm burns under his palm. He lets go of me quickly and peers over the edge of the roof.  
“Who was that?” he asks softly.  
“You were about to jump!” Sol pushes me towards the center of the roof “What were you thinking?! Why were you sitting so fucking close to the edge?! Jesus!”  
“I don’t know.” I shrug helplessly “I just sorta…it seemed like a good idea at the time, alright?”  
“Who did you see?”  
Sol and I turn towards Equius.  
It occurs to me I have never seen Equius truly angry before, because if I had before this point I would have run and hidden.  
“I don’t know-w-w w-who he is. I nev-v-ver saw-w him before.”  
“Are,” he pauses, takes a deep breath. Something seems to flow out of him and he looks like his normal, wispy self again “Are you certain you have never seen him before?”  
“Yeah.”  
“What’s wrong?”  
Eq ignores Sol “Was he blonde?”  
“No.”  
“Could you see his eyes?”  
“Not at this height.”  
“Could you see his skin?”  
“Didn’t notice…why?”  
He shakes his head “It’s nothing.”  
“I’ve never seen that before.” Sol’s face is drained “I think you were being influenced or something. Fucking controlled and stuff.”  
“There was someone there.” I say, glancing at Eq warily “He…he had dark hair and a hat and a black T-shirt.”  
“No pants?”  
“Yes Sol there was pants.”  
“We should go.” Equius flickers and disappears, which makes my head hurt to watch.  
I touch the cold bone in my pocket “Are you ok?”  
“I’m dead.” he says flatly.  
“Wait, wait. I need to ask one more thing.”  
He is irritated now “Yes?”  
Sol rubs his arm uncomfortably “What…what do you want from Eridan? Why are you following him to school?”  
Tell him Equius. Tell me while you’re at it.  
“If I had had a choice in the matter I would still be at ho- uh, in the house.”  
Shrugging, I head towards the exit. “I don’t really care what he wants as long as he’s not gonna kill or molest me.”  
“I don’t plan to do either.”  
“Are you coming Sol?” I hold the door open for him.  
He bites his lip “I’m not finished with you two.”  
With a cackle, I shut the door in his face and dart down the stairs before he can retaliate.

Sol parts ways with us on the second floor, heading for his locker after assurances that whoever it was I saw on the front steps will most likely have no interest in him. I’m not buying it but I let him go anyway since he doesn’t seem to want to be around us anymore. It’s been a long day for him. He has a lot to think about.  
Same here. I can’t stop turning it over in my mind: Sol can see ghosts. This explains so much to me about him and his weirdness. Not just about the mirrors, his hate for hospitals and cemeteries, his fear of Bloody Mary, but… a lot about Sol as a person. He hates watching death on TV and is always complaining about how unrealistic perspectives of the afterlife is, bitching his head off about ghost stories, bitching bitching bitching all the fucking time. Fictional death really affects him, but I never saw him cry over Mituna’s death once last year. Not even at the funeral.  
The funeral.  
He sat through the whole thing wearing a sad smile, his eyes dry, sometimes snorting at something the pastor giving the sermon said. I saw him put his head in his hands when the pastor talked about the love of God and all the stuff they normally spout at a funeral about ashes to ashes, and I have to wonder if it was to stop himself from laughing.  
Curiosity gets the better of me. I walk to the bathrooms and stand in front of a mirror.  
“Don’t do it.” says Equius.  
“Bloody Mary.”  
“This is an awful idea.”  
“Bloody Mary.”  
“You’re making a mistake.”  
“Bloody Mary.”  
“You made a mistake.”  
I stare at the mirror. Nothing happens.  
“You are suicidally stupid.”  
“That’s not a word.” I grumble, half disappointed, half relieved.  
“A word.” repeats a dull voice.  
I whirl around, grabbing the bone on instinct. Inside the stall directly behind me, a boy sits on the toilet seat, his jeans and underwear around his ankles, a needle dangling from one limp hand and drool from his lips. Equius makes a noise of disgust. The boy’s skin is pockmarked with punctures-I forget the proper junkie term for them- and his eyes are glazed. He looks exactly like one of those time lapse photos of those junkies, with the unfortunate addition of being dead.  
“That is so gross.” I stick out my tongue and the ghost does the same.  
“Let’s go.”  
“You got it, Eq.”  
I make a point of slamming the door.


	12. All that remains is in my backpack

“W-wait a fuckin’ second.”  
“What is it?” he speaks to me from my desk, where he sits checking my math homework- I didn’t ask him to do anything of the sort either.  
“W-what about my fuckin’ shirt? I didn’t ask him about my shirt. Do you think he took it.”  
He shrugs “I couldn’t tell you what he’d want with it.”  
I toss my hands up as if it should be obvious “To make me suffer! Y’know-w-w-w, I don’t care that he took but he coulda at least admitted it to me, dammit.”  
“Twelve and twelve is not one hundred and forty four.”  
“Yes it is.”  
“This is addition.”  
I flash him a glare. “You don’t hav-ve to do that.”  
“I think I should, if you’re still at the stage where you can’t tell the difference between and addition and a multiplication sign.”  
So it turns out Equius can be solid enough to sit in a chair and move a pen. Also, when I came up to my room he took the chair at the desk almost automatically, as if he has been doing this for a long time. Thinking back over all the problem pieces of homework, I wonder how many sheets I turned in without realising one of the sums had been reworked in my own hand without me actually doing it, or how many numbers had been subtly changed. I watched him for a moment when he first sat down and saw he can mimic my handwriting perfectly, which is incredibly creepy. Kind of touching. But at this point more creepy than anything else.  
“How come you nev-ver talk about how-w-w you died?” the question flies out before I have a chance to bite it back.  
He doesn’t look up from the work. “Does it matter how I died?”  
Well I’m in this deep already “Yeah. I think it does, considerin’ how-w-ev-ver you died landed you in my basement.”  
“Mm-hmm.”  
“And Sol mentioned something about murders, to which you replied, ‘yes, him’.”  
“Nine times three isn’t thirty.”  
“Fine, fine if you’re not gonna tell me how you carked it why don’t you tell me w-w-w-who it is you think I saw-w?”  
He still won’t look at me. His shoulders are dead straight, his mouth is a slash and his hair covers his eyes. I need to stop.  
“The one who somehow compelled me to jump off the roof.”  
“He’s dead.” says Equius.  
“Dead like you? Or dead like that guy in the bathroom?”  
“I don’t know. I’m not interested.”  
I, on the other hand, really am interested.  
I stand up, pat him swiftly on the shoulder and head to the basement, grabbing my school bag on the way down. His bones wait in the shelf where I left them. Piece by piece, I gingerly pack the bones into the back, cushioning them with the jacket and a few blankets. The bones are so light, like they are made of foam and soap. I handle them as if this is true. His skull goes in last, wrapped up carefully in a childhood quilt of mine I found mouldering in a box of toys. Satisfied, I push the bookcase back in front of the shelf.  
“Hey Eq!” I call upstairs.  
“Yes?”  
“I have your bones in a backpack now. I’m gonna keep it under my bed, except for the vertebra.”  
“You are aware of the connotations of necrophilia in that action?”  
“I think you mean ‘thanks buddy’.”  
“That too.”  
I find a space for the bones in the corner of the wall, tucked behind several boxes of books. If I reach into the space between the wall and my bed, I can tug the bag up. He’ll be right underneath me when I sleep and easily accessible if I feel I need to move his remains quickly. Damn, he’s right, this is kind of like necrophilia.


	13. All that remains of a 'friendship'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll apologise for the soap-opera quality of the ending up here instead of down there by it so as not to ruin the impact, if there is any. Finally we're going to get some exposition on what exactly was wrong with everyone's favorite all-fish morailship, and for this story, I have tried to honestly represent the way it seems the characters have canonly acted. It sorta went wrong, but you can make you own judgement.  
> As for the utterly shameless ending, I'm a little short on time at the moment, and since we just hit the 13th chapter of a paranormal fic, I thought I should ...add in some ghostly activity or something...even though this is only the prelude to that...  
> I'm just gonna stop talking now.

I try to put the other guy out of my mind. There are many more issues demanding my immediate and undivided attention at school the next day. Sol and I don’t talk to each other, which is kind of awkward and even a little embarrassing, having to avert my eyes every time he looks towards me and catches me looking. Things have changed between us, and after yesterday, how could they not? The problem is I still have no idea what has changed and each time I try to think about it, the picture of that guy and his weird eye-pits edges into my mind and makes it impossible to concentrate. Sol aside, it’s hard to pay attention in class because of the guy too.  
As if having a ghost in my pocket wasn’t enough of a distraction.  
On the bright side, Eq is kinda of helpful to have around. Despite being the same age as me when he died and having an education outdated by 16 years, he knows more about math then I can ever hope to. He guides me through the problems, talking as loudly as the rest of the class. We figured out yesterday only I can hear him when he talks. That isn’t to say the others don’t notice him at all: Karkat complains of cold spots following me around, John says I keep giving him cold hugs (I tell him to stop touching me and his problem will be solved) and Rose swears she saw someone in the corner of her eye in a hallway that was empty except for the two of us. So far, these are harmless little quirks. Even so I think I should have a talk with Equius about keeping his ghostly business to a minimum and maybe turning up the temperature while he is at it.  
This morning I put him inside an oven glove to protect my leg from the cold. The oven glove makes my pocket fat, and stopped doing its job within 20 minutes, but there is no way I’m going to leave Eq lying around anymore. Sol might not be the only person in school who can see ghosts apart from me, contrary to his belief. Having the rest of his skeleton out of my sight makes me nervous too. However, there is no way I can convince myself hauling around literally all that remains of Equius is a good idea in case I am attacked again, if that was an attack earlier. I could risk losing the whole skeleton; thusly his link to this world and therefore force him into demon-hood or whatever to avoid the white nothing of oblivion. Also it would be inexcusably creepy. Funny how fast I have been immersed in this, isn’t it?

I end up spending lunchtime with Kanaya, watching her work on the textiles project due at the end of the week. Sewing is a boring and confusing art to me. I haven’t got a clue what she means when she talks about ‘cross stitches’ and ‘applique’, but I nod anyway, not wanting to be impolite in case I fall out of her good graces. My position in those is still uncertain to me, after so many weeks of distance. Equius is minds his own business in my pocket. I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s quiet.  
Kanaya is a master of the multi-task. Somehow, she manages to hold intelligent conversation with me while her fingers blur over the fabric.  
“…at any rate the university local to our area doesn’t have the kind of science department you would want. I can understand your wanting to stay close to home (she brandishes an instrument that looks to have come directly from one of the Saw sequels), but none of us are going to stay in this same city for the rest of our lives, I should hope.”  
“You’re right.” I agree wearily “It’s not like Pa w-will drop dead the moment I leave…but it sure fuckin’ feels that w-way.”  
She lays a comforting hand on my shoulder, which makes me uneasy because it’s the hand holding that nameless torture instrument. “Your father’s health will last with or without you here, Eridan.”  
“I guess so,” I say quickly in hopes she will get that thing away from my face.  
“At any rate, a Marine Biology major is an ambitious choice for a highly competitive career. You would be better off at a university near a body of water. With your father’s wealth you could go as far as Australia if you wanted to.”  
I laugh “Not sure I want to go that far.”  
“If it were me…” Kanaya starts. Her eyes glaze over for a moment, than she snaps back to reality “If it were me, I would be out of here like a canon shot.”  
Kanaya has wanted to be a fashion designer since she was old enough to pick up a pencil to sketch her ideas. Her portfolio is actually impressive and serious. Kanaya is nowhere the typical airhead people picture when they imagine a fashion designer. She is dead serious about her plans for the future and I have no doubts she’s going to get exactly where she wants to on the career ladder. I sure wouldn’t want to be the poor fool standing in her way.  
A few minutes of idle chatter pass pleasantly. At some point, she becomes hesitant. I can sense there is something she wants to say and I can guess what it is from the way she has grown awkward.  
“Eridan…” she starts “Have you heard from Feferi recently? I only ask because I haven’t in a while and I was just wondering if she is alright.”  
“Kanaya, if you wanna ask if she’s ignoring me you can just say it.”  
She seems surprised that I don’t snap at her. “Yes, that is exactly what I wanted to ask.”  
“She is,” I shrug, feeling the apathy in my voice “I tried. It sucks, but it is what it is.”  
Kanaya stops “And it’s not fair at all.”  
I look up in shock.  
“I agree.” Equius makes me jump even harder “Feferi’s conduct is as bad as yours was.”  
Kanaya doesn’t know she has a supporter, so she keeps going, probably afraid I will stop her if she doesn’t get it all out. “I’m not saying you were never irritating or needy Eridan, because sometimes you could be such a prat I wanted to smack you, but I am saying the situation has reversed now and worsened. I mean, I know Feferi’s home life wasn’t easy…I think she was using all the love you were willing to give her as a substitute for the attention she wasn’t getting at home…it’s so hard to describe this without making her the villain, it’s just…I don’t know.”  
“She loved the idea of the kind of friendship you were willing to give her, but not the idea of putting in the work for it.” says Equius.  
I repeat this to Kanaya, phrasing it as a question.  
Feeling we are on the same page, she relaxes “Exactly. She was happy to be your friend when it suited her. She didn’t like to think you were a person with your own problems too…and along the way you sort of started copying her. It was like watching a cat attack its reflection. I don’t think she wanted to have a good relationship as much as you wanted to. I think she acted the way she had seen other people act, the ‘good’ friendships, but I don’t think she knew what she was doing and neither did you and the two of you spent more time irritating each other than you did doing each other some good…am I making sense?”  
I nod. “The thing is Kan, I can kinda understand why she didn’t know how to act. It’s not her fault.”  
She shakes her head “For a while it wasn’t her fault, but she should have learned. You learn by observing other people. It’s like she could never make the effort when you were involved.”  
“That’s not true. She cared about me. maybe she’s distant know-w, but she just needs her space.”  
Kanaya falters “Are you sure?”  
Of course it’s not, is it? Feferi was my best friend since kindergarten and we must have stayed best friends for that long for a reason. I enjoyed being with her…it was hard to find things to talk about sometimes, or to get her to listen, or to bring myself to care about her problems, but I did it because…it’s what I had seen other people do.  
“I don’t know.”  
“If she cares about you so much then why does she ignore you now?” puts in Equius “The two of you looked like an arranged marriage to me, trying to make it work to please the audience.”  
Oddly, Kanaya says almost the same thing “You and Feferi were like a celebrity friendship couple sweeping the bad things under the rug for the sake of the media.”  
“Well obviously if we’re having this talk we didn’t do a good job of hiding it.” I mutter bitterly.  
“And when she left,” Kanaya continues “She left without telling any of us. Not a word to you, who was supposed to be her best friend, or to Sol who is supposed to be her boyfriend. We had to find out from the damn butler.”  
I remember that day painfully well. All of us do. The group was going to the park and we swung by Feferi’s house (mansion) to ask if she wanted to come, and when the butler opened the door he said they were gone, and that he himself was only here to pack the last of his things up. That night she called me from New York, all laughs and snarky comments, no apologies and none of the explanations I wanted. All I got was “I thought it would be easier this way.”  
She throws her hands up helplessly “She went through so much trouble to hide her move from us just because she wanted to watch her own funeral, and you have been grieving for months. Honestly I thought you were going to be this way for the rest of the year.” she stops and swipes her sleeve across her eyes.  
Shit. Crying. “Seriously, Kan, stop. It’s ok. It was more my fault than it was hers.”  
“Oh for the love of Allah.” groans Equius.  
Kanaya’s eyes flare “Are you for real-”  
The door bursts open and Karkat barrels in. “Oh thank God!” I can tell right away something serious is happening “Guys, you need to come right now.” he is out of breath. He must have run all the way here.  
“What’s going on?” I jump up.  
“Jade’s on the roof. She’s gonna jump.”


	14. All that remains is not all that remains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me kick off this chapter with an apology for my insanely long period of absence. I have recently moved to Austraila from the UK. The move was all kinds of hell and i was without wi-fi for more than a full month. Hopefully, I'll be able to establish a regular sort of routine now that I am in school and stuff. Their summer break happens during Christmas. Isn't that weird, non-Australians?

I have never run so fast in my life. Neither has my progress seemed so slow before. Word must not have spread about Jade yet, because the crowd isn’t dashing for the roof like us. Karkat blazes a trail for Kanaya and I. The crowd parts in front of him as they would for a charging elephant. The look on his face and the fact that it’s Karkat tell them to stay out of his way: if he’s running, then it’s important. A deep stitch forms in my side. I haven’t done much more than mope about in my room for a long time. Ignoring it, I match Karkat and Kanaya’s pace all the way up to the rooftop.  
We explode from the stairwell and stop dead in our tracks. For a terrifying moment as my eyes adjust, I am afraid Jade has already jumped. Then I see her standing on the ledge. What Karkat neglected to mention is the large pair of silver scissors gripped in one hand, or the fact that it is pressed to Dave’s throat. Her arm is wrapped around his neck, and she is poised to drag him over with her.  
There are three teachers up here, as well as Rose and John.   
John hears us coming up and glances over his shoulder very briefly, then looks back to Jade as if afraid she will jump and take Dave too the instant he looks away.  
“…talk about this all you want Jade,” Mrs Kaur, the school councillor is saying “But this is not the right way to go about it. You don’t want to hurt Dave, do you?”  
“Course I wanna,” Jade replies lazily in a voice that is not her own “Hence the fuckin’ scissors.” is that a Southern accent?  
Jade isn’t Jade. From the confused look Kanaya gives me, I can tell I am not the only one who realises this at first glance. The way she holds herself is wrong. The sneer twisting her lips and eyes is an expression Jade would never be able to make, fuelled by a depth of hate Jade is incapable of feeling. The atmosphere around her tastes stale and like lightning, like a storm that stewed over the ocean for years before erupting on the coast, and it makes my hair stand on end. Her hair and skirt float in a breeze despite the lack of wind.  
She has taken Dave’s shades and stuck them on top of her head. Dave’s eyes are screwed up against the sunlight, which will roast his retinas if it hits them unfiltered- the condition he and Karkat share, he has it much worse than Karkat. His mouth is pressed into a tight line. He does not struggle or shrink away from Jade. He is so still I might think she has already stabbed him dead if it weren’t for the shallow, quiet breaths he draws. He stands, his legs not shaking, on the floor of the roof while Jade’s heels hang in space over the ledge.  
At the sound of my entry, Jade looks up, her eyes suddenly bright with interest “Oh hey there, bro! I was wonderin’ when y’all were gonna show up.”  
Her attention is a spotlight. I am the focus of the entire assembly on the rooftop, each one of them swallowing nervously and racking their brains for what possible use Jade may have for me.  
“Jade…”  
“Wasn’t talkin’ to y’all.” she narrows her eyes and I am chilled to the marrow “I was talkin’ to the brother hidin’ in your motherfuckin’ pocket.”  
“It’s him.” Equius’s voice drips with something I have never heard from him before: fear. Earnest fear; he is genuinely afraid for the first time since I discovered him “I knew it would be.”  
Finally I have a chance to figure this out. I step past John and Rose (but no Sol?) and the teachers, one of whom tries to stop me, but I shrug him off. With each step I take closer to Jade, the temperature of the air drops, and along with it the temperature inside me. My breath steams. I fold my arms and try not to shiver.  
“Who are you?” surprisingly, my voice is even.  
“Who’re you?” she returns “What’re y’all doin’ with him?” ‘him’, she says it with such malice I can’t help but put a protective hand over the bone.   
“He was in my house.”  
“Eridan-” interrupts Mrs Kaur.  
Jade rounds on her “Shut up.”   
Mrs Kaur pales and closes her mouth, backing up.   
“Not a motherfuckin’ word outta the rest a y’all. Too many bitches yabberin’ at once messes with my damned head. I tend ta get real mad when my head screws up on me, and if I get mad, I might hafta take it out on some poor fuckin’ fool who don’t deserve it.” she kisses Dave on the cheek. He shudders.  
“What are you doing with Dave, then, if he doesn’t deserve to die?”   
She shrugs, but it’s not really Jade, because that movement with her shoulders is more like an epileptic jerk than a shrug “Wrong place, wrong time. Convenience. He’s cute as hell. Take your pick. Now I’m sick of talkin’ to y’all, so bring him the fuck out already.”  
Dread seizes me “What do you want with him?”  
“The fuck do you think I want?” she leans breathtakingly far out over the drop to the point the only thing anchoring her on the roof is Dave. “Don’t play dumb. Don’t suit y’all.”  
I’m not sure which one of us she is talking to. “Please just let him go then we can talk about this somewhere else.”  
This is the wrong thing to say. Jade’s eyes darken and she digs the tip of the right blade of the scissors into Dave’s collarbone. Blood wells up around the silver. Dave swallows hard and the rest of us gasp. She twists the scissors like a corkscrew and the skin around it follows like a whirlpool. It’s all I can do not to vomit when she pulls the tip away with a quarter-sized chunk of skin. John can no longer stand idly by.  
He steps up beside me and shouts “Just stop it Jade! You don’t know what you’re doing!”  
“Sure do.” she snaps “A wicked bad crime here, that she (she jabs herself in the shoulder around Dave) is gonna get lotsa shit for. Y’know it gets motherfuckin’ worse with every second and as fun as this is, I about ta lose interest.”  
“What do you want?” Eq has steeled himself.  
Jade’s mouth is stretches into a grin “How ‘bout a hug?”  
The others swallow nervously, thinking she is talking to me. I notice Dave has stiffened a little. He tenses, as if straining to hear a quiet voice. No way. There’s no way he…can he?  
“What do you really want?” Eq is not going to be taking any shit today “I was hoping you wouldn’t make an ass of yourself the first time we talked.”  
“Y’all been waitin’ for me?”  
Now the others are confused, aware that they are only hearing one half of a conversation. Jade seems to satisfied she is getting the other, silent part of the conversation from me. I can see John staring at me out of the corner of my eye, suspicious and confused, but mostly terrified.   
“Yes. Since yesterday.” with each word he grows more confident “I can’t say I’m impressed by the manner in which you have chosen to conduct yourself.”  
“And here I was thinkin’ we were past the point of your constant patronisin’.” growls Jade “Y’all know that don’t help.”  
“Why have you picked now of all times, and this way, of all the methods, to contact me?”  
Jade shrugs, again, that jerky alien movement “Y’all think I’m gonna be sloppy ‘bout this? Give y’all a chance to run away?” she puts her chin on top of Dave’s head “Can’t go nowhere if y’all wanna keep his ass around.”  
“You audience is captive. Say what you need to say.”  
“Hmmm….no I don’t think I wanna now.” Jade inspects the scissors in her hands with an air of boredom, then pushes Dave away. He stumbles forward into John’s open arms, who quickly retreats with him and gives him to Kanaya. Mrs Kaur and one of the other teachers go to check on him, muttering frantically about how he is going to be alright.  
Without her anchor, Jade sways back and forth easily. Her personal breeze picks up substantially, seizes her hair and skirt and tears at them. She looks over her shoulder “Look at that. They evacuated the school. Made a real motherfuckin’ scene, didn’t I?” she smiles smugly “What do you think? Should I jump?”  
This time she is talking to me “No.”  
“Why no?” she regards the scissors again.  
“Because Jade is innocent.”   
“And you are not making your case any more sympathetic with this nonsense.” adds Equius.  
“Innocent?” repeats Jade “Sweet’s the word I’d wanna use. She ain’t innocent. None of y’all are motherfucking innocent of anythin’.”  
She lifts the scissors. She steps off the ledge onto the roof. She plunges the scissors into her stomach, grinning wildly. Then something black and ashy leaps out of her back. It moves too fast to distinguish any features or shape, but I know it’s him. He blinks out of existence. Then Jade is on her knees with the scissors in her stomach.  
Tears stream down her face. Trembling, she raises her bloody hands “Is this my blood?” her voice is back to normal.  
John is at her side in a second. He holds his twin carefully “It’s ok, Jade, it’s gonna be ok.” he looks up at the remaining teacher “Get an ambulance.”  
“What d-did I do?” she stammers “Is this my blood?”  
John keeps up a stream of soothing words while the blood drains sluggishly around the scissors from her midsection. Already, her green shirt is soaked. To my inexperienced eyes she looks to have lost too much blood to survive, but I doubt it is true. I crouch in front of Jade.  
A red thread bubbles over her lip when she tries to talk, so I shake my head “Don’t talk. Just sit tight. You’re going to be alright.”  
Behind her, I can see most of the school churning on the front lawn. What did they see, I wonder? Were they evacuated in time to see Jade holding Dave on the ledge, or just Jade? Did they catch sight anyone at all? Whatever happens, Jade is probably ruined at this school. There is the howl of police sirens in the distance and the ambulance, thankfully, pulls into the parking lot as I watch. Medics spill out of it and dash through the crowd to the doors.  
“I see the medics.” I tell John “They must have called them earlier.”  
“Sol did.” Karkat comes to my shoulder “Sol told me I needed to find you. He said he would take care of everything else, but it was important to get your raggedy ass up here, otherwise Dave and Jade would both die.”  
“Yeah, w-well. Good job.”  
“Eridan.” He forces me to look at him “What the fuck was that? What were you talking about? Who was Jade talking about?”  
“I don’t know. I just played along.”  
He shakes his head “I’m not falling for that. You knew what she exactly what she was talking about. None of us could make any sense of her. I was sure John was gonna watch his sister die in front of him and kill his boyfriend in the process-”  
“He’s not my boyfriend.” John says automatically.  
“-and then you come up here and suddenly everything is ok. She relaxes. And you know what? That wasn’t Jade. She was totally wrong. Not, I mean, just…” he finds his vocabulary inadequate to describe it.  
Even I don’t know what to call it “I know.”  
“What’s going on?”  
I lie “I have no idea.”  
“Who was the other guy?” Dave is asking.  
“The teacher?” suggests Rose.  
“No. There was Mrs Kaur, Mr Paul and Mr P., then you guys. But I heard another guy.”  
“There was no one else here, Dave.”  
“Yes there was. I heard him. Are you seriously expecting me to believe no one else heard him?”  
“I don’t know what to tell you Dave.”  
A chill runs up my spine, but I don’t turn around. I slip my hand into my pocket and touch the bone.  
It is warm.


	15. All that remains is confusion at the moment

“She’s stabilised.”  
Karkat drops his head into his hands and sighs deeply. All the tension goes out of Rose at once. She slumps in her chair and stares at the ceiling, tears glistening in her eyes. Sol laughs weakly, then hugs Kanaya with one arm.  
“What the fuck does that even mean?” grumbles Karkat.  
“Karkat wants to know what that means.” I say into the phone.  
At the other end of the phone, John makes a noncommittal noise “Hospital jargon for ‘she’s ok’ I think. She’s not awake yet. They let me see her-” his voice breaks “Jesus, Eri, they have her hooked up to so many wires and there’s this mask on her face giving her oxygen and…and…she looks like a stunt double dummy, you know? She doesn’t even look like my sister anymore.”  
I grope for something comforting to say “Uh, she’ll be ok, you know? Jade’s tough.”  
“They have her on suicide watch. Oh God, I didn’t tell you! Dave’s on watch too!”  
“What?!”   
Everyone in the room jumps.  
“Put John on loudspeaker!” orders Karkat.  
“You’re on loudspeaker,” I tell him, placing my mobile on the coffee table.  
I can hear him swallow nervously “Dave was ok for a while. I saw him about an hour after I got to the hospital. He came into the waiting room for a minute to talk to me and Mr Strider was with him. He told me he was going to go over to your place soon, Eri, as soon as the hospital ran some tests on him or something. He left, then like half an hour later this nurse comes into the waiting room and starts shouting my name. I thought Jade was dead or dying, but the nurse told me it was Dave.”  
John pauses.  
“Go on.” says Kanaya gently, although her jaw is clenched.  
The floating feeling of relief I got at hearing Jade is ok is quickly deflating. Alarm stabs at me at the thought that the ghost might have targeted Dave.  
John continues “He cut his wrists open. Mr Strider was out of the room for one minute. He heard a shout and when he came back, the room they had Dave in was a fucking mess. The bed was flipped over and the light fixtures were hanging loose and the glass was all broken, and Dave had cut both his wrists open with a piece of glass. There was blood everywhere. The nurse came to get me because Dave was asking for me…he made everyone else leave the room before he would talk to me.”  
“Is he ok?” interrupts Rose.  
“He’s alive. They’re keeping him for the rest of the week.” John sniffs “It’s weird. He didn’t look suicidal to me. I mean you guys know Dave. He loves himself way too fucking much to think about ending his own life! Dave was scared! He told me the moment his dad left this guy came out of the ceiling, like, melted out of it and wrecked the room. The guy held him down and cut his wrists…but it doesn’t make sense, you know? Dave had to have cut himself and then trashed the room, because there was no way anyone could wreck a room so fast. People would have heard, right?”  
My legs give out. Literally, all the strength leaves them at once. Equius catches me, with the other’s attention fixed to the phone in horror, letting me lean on him for support. He’s never been so solid before. So…here.  
“It’s not your fault.” he whispers.  
“I-I don’t know, John.” says Kanaya “Do you think you could arrange it so that we could speak to Dave?”  
“They’re not letting anyone in to see him. Family only.” He lets out a broken little laugh “Fuck today, huh? It just keeps getting worse and worse…I don’t get how Dave could do that to a room. The place was shredded and he has noodle arms! He never works out!”  
I look across the room at Sol. His face is grim. His mouth is a taut slash. I think he may start howling if he tries to open his mouth to speak, but he shakes his head at me, acknowledging me and Equius.  
The ghost, I mouth.  
He aims his eyes at the floor.  
“John, do you want to come over?” I ask “If Jade’s ok, I mean. It’ll make you feel better if you’re with everyone.”  
“No thanks Eri. The hospital will blow up or something if I leave. I’ll call you in the morning, ok?”  
“Ok.” says Karkat “Get some sleep you sad fuck, and make sure you get some nourishment stuffed down that craw. Also tell your dad we said hi and tell Mr Strider that too, if you see him. And when you see Dave? Well, just give the phone to Dave and I’ll tell him what he needs to hear personally.”  
“I’d better go.” says John.  
A surge of some kind of desperation floods me “We love you John.”  
“I love you guys’ too.” he hangs up.  
Rose cries openly now, speaking with difficulty around a lump in her throat “Well, I think I can safely say this has been the most awful day of my life.”  
Karkat punches her in the arm, his standard gesture when he is trying to cheer someone up “At least the idiots are still alive.”  
“Why would Dave do that?” Kanaya rubs her eyes in exhaustion “Good Lord. I cannot believe he would try to kill himself…do you think it was some kind of shock reaction?”  
Sol lifts his head finally “Dave would never hurt himself. Jade would never hurt anyone. People are doing things they’d never normally do. I mean, fuck, Ed just dropped the L-bomb on somebody.”  
This earns a weak laugh from Rose and Equius, whom I elbow in the stomach. It surprises me when I connect.  
“It’s possible Jade may have a tumour.” says Rose “There have been a few cases where the action of a tumour pressing on the brain can change the behaviour of the subject and make them act in ways they never would have dreamed of before. A loving spouse can become an abuser in a matter of weeks. I’m not quite prepared to believe that diagnosis for Jade, however, because I haven’t noticed anything unusual about her up to this point. Her behaviour wouldn’t explode like that suddenly. It would be a more noticeable, gradual decline.”  
“What if she has schizophrenia?” suggests Karkat with a cautious glance at Sol.  
Sol’s eyes settle on some distant point over Karkat’s shoulder “Nah. Schizo isn’t like that. I’d know if Jade had it. She’d do stuff like Tuna did. Jade’s never jumped out of a moving car because she didn’t like the radio station.”  
An uncomfortable silence settles on the room. Sol’s late brother Mituna is a tabooed subject in the group unless Sol mentions it himself, and even then we’re all very careful about what we say around him. We don’t even watch movies with a theme of mental illnesses anymore.  
“Say something.” urges Equius.  
I wriggle out of his arms, trying to look like I’m stretching out my spine. At the same time I don’t really want to break contact with him, just in case he becomes insubstantial again.  
“Maybe she got possessed.”  
Everyone looks at me. Sol’s eyes are like a burning brand.  
“Let’s refrain from making a joke of this.” says Kanaya.  
Rose bites her lip “You know it’s not impossible to create your own demon.”   
The spotlight falls on Rose. She rolls her shoulders forward, refusing to back down “There are some cases that have been dubbed as possession that are hard to explain with the psychological or scientific excuses. It surprises me as much as the rest of you that Eridan would suggest the paranormal, being the slave to science that he is…never mind. Forget I said anything. It is silly.”  
I could prove it’s not silly.  
I could make them touch the vertebrae and show them Equius. In the long term, it wouldn’t achieve much except for making the others accept the truth, my truth. Or maybe, just showing the others that this is my fault no matter what Equius says to me. I have caused this in some way. The moment I stepped into that basement I set off some kind of chain reaction of doom. I need them to know. I need someone to know. Someone to accept it.   
I see the way it’s going to work out. This ghost, this demon hunting Eq will systematically destroy everyone I care about until I’m totally isolated and he will be free to do what he wants to us.   
And there is nothing I can do.  
Except for this “Anyone want some pizza? Pa said I could order out.”  
“Sure.”  
“Half pepperoni?”  
“Half mushroom.”  
“Mushrooms are unforgivably gross. I demand pineapple.”  
Pa went to bed half an hour ago. He gave up trying to get us to talk to each other. Before John finally reported in we had all been propped up in the furniture like props, totally inert except for the occasional sniffle and blinking. Rose, Karkat, Kanaya and Sol ended up on my doorstep without any planning. Their parents apologised profusely to my father for the intrusion, explaining their child insisted on coming here to see me and refused to see reason. So they dropped their kids off reluctantly with an overnight bag and kiss on the forehead and a promise to call, which they did although there was not much chance of eliciting conversation.   
Even though we just sat around in silence, there was nowhere else I would have rather been. Not with John while Jade was brought back from the brink of death, and while Dave struggled with things the others had never expected out of him and things I knew I should have been there to defend him from. Now that we have been given permission from John to come back to life, we don’t know what to talk about, or if we should say anything.  
I guess the others must know it’s not a tumour. Nothing like schizo. Nothing like anything we’re going to be told. The main problem now is they’re not sure what to think.   
And while I’m thinking about all these things, a ghost has his arm around my shoulder and is telling me it’s all ok.  
What the hell do I do now?


	16. All that remains washes the dishes

“Something needs to happen.”  
It’s a little bit past midnight. Currently, I am the only living thing that is awake in the house and I am washing dishes with the help of a ghost. It surprises both of us that he is able to manipulate solid objects now, as easily and dexterously I as am. I suppose we should have tested the limitations of his abilities by lifting up the grand piano in the front room, or something equal in terms of drama and poetry. Instead he grabbed a sponge and sunk his arms up to the elbows in hot soapy water.  
“Something did happen,” he hands me another plate to dry “Two of your childhood friends were brutalised by a demon.”  
“What’s the distinction between plain old ghost and a demon? And how do you know this shit anyway?”  
He gestures to the next room “Keep your voice down.”  
I poke my head around the door to make sure they’re all still asleep. Karkat’s head is on the coffee table, a blanket thrown over him. Kanaya and Rose are spooning on the couch and Sol is slumped in a chair. I’m tempted to go check he’s still alive. In his current position, he looks a little bit like he had a heart attack and has quietly slipped away while the rest of us weren’t paying attention. Or maybe it’s just my frame of mind.  
“Should w-w-we w-wake Sol up?”  
Eq frowns “I’m not entirely sure I trust him yet.”  
I smirk “You mean you trust me?”  
“I assure you I am rolling my eyes behind my glasses. Yes, of course I trust you. I haven’t got much choice in the matter, have I?”  
Somehow I actually resent him for saying stuff like that to me “Jeez Eq, why don’t you just propose already?”  
Of course he trusts me. He doesn’t have a choice. He’s trapped in my house and I’m the only person who can see him, save Sol and Sol isn’t exactly renowned for his stability and proactive behaviours. Not that I am either and that’s what bothers me. If Equius were a living, breathing student at my high-school, it’s likely our paths would have never crossed. We would know each other. I’d think of him as some random face in the crowd, maybe a weird and a little gross at second glance, and he’d think of me as some scrawny hipster nerd who is gradually driving all of his friends away with his arrogance and entitled attitude.  
Maybe he does think of me that way. Equius doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who keeps everyone updated on his opinions of them, who will inform me at the slightest shift in his mood. Hell I don’t even know the guy. That’s what bothers me.  
It’s like when you’re on a field trip, when you’re removed from the school environment and everyone has been split up from their friends by the travel arrangements. You start talking to the kid plunked in the seat next to you and realise, hey, they’re not so bad. They’re kind of fun, or interesting, or intriguing. You start to forget about your real friends on the other bus, to get really drawn into conversation with this kid. You get a glimpse of what it would be like if you had made friends with this weirdo instead of the collection of weirdoes on the other bus. Then everyone gets off the bus and you weave through a crowd, latch onto your normal group and totally forget about the other kid, who does the same thing.  
Once or twice, you’ll pass them in a hall and remember your conversation briefly and there will be that ‘what if’, but you know nothing will ever come of that.  
I think Equius and I are stuck in a traffic jam on that bus together.  
Why the hell does that hurt me so much?  
“Who was he?”  
Equius rolls his shoulders back, as if steeling himself “It is not a particularly happy story.”  
“I can deal with it. I mean, if you can deal, then I can deal.”  
He pulls the plug out of the sink and watches the soap and scutz swirl down the drain. A moment passes in silence. I dry my hands on a paper towel and pass him, but his hands aren’t wet.  
“His name is Gamzee.”  
A shiver shoots up my spine “What kind of a name is that?”  
“The same sort of name as Equius I suppose. An odd one.”  
I shrug “Hey, my name is a mash-up of Erin and Daniel because Pa couldn’t pick his fav-vourite from the two. I don’t get w-w-w-w-why he didn’t name me after some Greek myth dude like my brother. Zeus. Apollo.”   
“You don’t need to do that.”  
“Do what?”  
“Try to put me at ease. I can tell you’re desperate to know what happened to me.”  
I flash him a sheepish grin and lean back on the counter because I think my legs may collapse without the support “I’ll keep my trap shut.”  
“What do you know about the family who owned this house before yours?”  
Huh. That is a good question “Not all that much, except they bury dead teenagers on their property. And there were two kids…you’re not saying…”  
He nods, his face devoid of all emotion “Yes. This was Gamzee’s house.”  
I swallow hard “Well shit. He’s not-”  
“No, no he’s never set foot over this threshold since the day his family moved away.” Equius removes his glasses and rubs his eyes on the back of his hand “He and I, we were part of a larger circle. My neighbour Vriska, Tavros, Terezi and…and another girl. We had known each other since kindergarten. Vriska was about as close to a sister as I ever had.”  
“Do you, I mean -did you have any siblings?” it’s strange to think I have never asked him.   
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth “Yes.” clearly this isn’t the time to elaborate, because his face is blank again after that little twitch “Gamzee was the weird one. Allow me to correct myself: the weirdest. We were all rather strange which is probably a large part of the reason we were friends. Terezi was blind, Tavros needed the aid of a wheelchair or crutches to get around thanks to Vriska and Vriska had a prosthetic arm. Let’s not go into the list of medications Gamzee was obliged by his psychiatrist to consume on a daily basis…suffice to say there were so many he said he felt greedy to eat a breakfast after his pills were finished.”  
I nod “Sol’s brother took all kind of lithium shit for his schizo.”  
“Gamzee had…a cocktail of mental problems. If I tried to explain his problems we would be here until the sun comes up. I admired him at the time for the way he dealt with it. That is to say, some of the time…he smoked an unbelievable amount of pot, actually, but most of the time he was the poster child of healthy coping methods. Up until he killed me that is.”  
A pause lapses into silence that lasts for about two minutes. What can I say to him? What can he say to me, after admitting to being killed by his friend? And why does it seem like an admission, why does he seem so guilt-stricken for being murdered? This is kind of like those women’s magazines Fef used to read, full of stories of women escaping domestic abuse. Equius is still trying to find a way to blame whatever it is that happened on himself, even after…  
“How long have you been dead?”  
“Close to seventeen years.”  
Almost as long as I have been alive “And you’ve been here for the entire time?”  
He shrugs “I wasn’t aware I was here for a long time. For around a year I knew nothing at all.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I mean there was nothing. It was an empty black space, except I was conscious of it being so. You know…I can compare it to the night after you have watched a horror movie, and the lights are out in your bedroom and you’re aching to get up and stumble to the light switch you know is there, but you just cannot bring yourself to do it.”  
I tug at a lock of hair, twirling it around my finger then letting it spring back into place “Is that what death is like?”  
“Perhaps. Somehow, I doubt it. When I was alive I had the misfortune, or possibly the privilege, of attending a few of my relatives’ death-beds, and most of them seemed quite happy to die. I doubt people would be unhappy to die if there was something foul on the other side. Besides, I have it on good faith from a …reliable source that Heaven ‘is sort of a thing’, to quote him.”  
“Who’s this mystery guy that keeps telling you stuff? He told you about your bones and shit, right?”  
He nods “I’m not sure of his name. I never asked.”  
“So if you’ve always been here in my house since you woke up, how come I’ve never seen you before?”  
“You have.”  
“No I haven’t. I heard you falling down the stairs.”  
His cheeks colour as if he still has blood “Ah, yes. I became solid momentarily and Ahab had picked that exact moment to take a nap at the top of the stairs, so...yes.”  
Racking my brain, I try to recall if I have ever seen anything like Equius around the house. Sure I have seen the clues he was here all my life, the cold spots and the moving furniture and stuff, but there was never anything that really screamed ‘GHOOOOOST!!’ to me.  
That I can remember. I give him a suspicious look “When have I ever seen you before?”  
It’s hard to read his expression, mostly because he doesn’t have one “I guess you didn’t. At any rate, I’ll cut to the chase. Gamzee had been deteriorating for a long time. Most of us expected he would be due for another stint in the asylum soon, but before that could happen he snapped and, regrettably, killed me.” he hunches his shoulders forward “And my best friend, Nepeta.”  
Oh. Wow. Considering what happened to me with Fef, I understand where people are coming from when they have their figurative heart crushed to bloody splinters by someone they thought they were going to be close to for the rest of their lives, and Equius just reeks of this tragedy. I figured there was something extra-sad about him I had missed.  
“What happened?”  
“There’s not much to tell. She and I were walking on the bridge over the river, Gamzee caught up to us and shot me in the leg with an arrow…I’m not sure why. I mean, his father was a hunter, so he probably stole into his weapons cache and took a crossbow because he thought it was pretty, knowing him. I didn’t fully realise how far gone he was until I saw him on the bridge. The arrow put me out of commission and I…well, this is embarrassing to admit, but I basically watched in frozen horror as he split Nepeta’s skull open with a rock and pushed her over the side of the bridge. Then he strangled me and that was that.” he spreads his arms “Dead as dust.”  
Tears sting my eyes “I don’t know-w-w…you look fine to me.”  
“Eridan…I truly regret what has happened to Jade and David. I’m not going to allow a repeat or something similar to it in the future. Before, I was…I was so stunned by his appearance I had no idea what to do. I think I was actually too afraid to materialise.”  
“I noticed.” I pat the piece of bone, which has stayed in my pocket all night “Next time we should have a plan.”  
“A plan that extends further than just gawking on the side-lines until someone is stabbed?”  
“Yeah, please, I don’t think I can handle losing another one of those fuck-ups.” I gesture to the next room.  
There’s that hint of a smile again “Believe me I share the sentiment. I have watched you all age. It was kind of torturous for the most part, but it would be a lie to say I don’t feel some sort of responsibility for you people.”  
“Why?”  
“Oh I don’t know. To answer your earlier question, I have been awake as long as you have lived here…I believe on some of his worse days, your father may have been able to see me. You should ask him.”  
I think back to the time I asked him if he thought our house was haunted “Nah, I once got close to asking, but he shot me down in a blaze of flames. Science is the religion in this house. Like the only time we’re Catholic is at Christmas and Easter.”   
Suddenly, there is a lump in my throat. He has been here for all those Christmases and Easters, our birthdays, and what would have been his birthdays if he still had the capacity to age, for the New Years Eves’ and the Valentine’s Days I spent skulking in my room experimenting on voodoo dolls, hoping for once, just this once, magic would be real long enough for me to spear Sol in the crotch. He has been here for more than most of my life, watching quietly, never saying a word that’s heard or doing a thing that’s acknowledged, but here all this time all the same.  
How can someone be so cruel?  
Seriously, what kind of messed up shit-bag do you have to be to kill two of your friends and then bury one of them in the foundations of your own house?  
I manage to speak past the lump in my throat “Why did he bring you here?”  
“I will be sure to ask him.”  
“How did he die?”  
“Suicide. I knew he was going to do it. A little over half a year after he killed us, he killed himself. Hanged himself in the basement. I’m not sure of the specific details, as I was still, ah, asleep at the time and didn’t wake up until his surviving family had moved out of the house. I only know what I know because Terezi and Tavros came to the empty house two months after I became aware of myself.”  
He rubs his arms as if he feels a chill.  
“Go on.” I urge.   
“I wasn’t able to leave the house, or even materialise outside the basement at the time. I was painfully conscious of what had happened to Nepeta and I, and I was totally desperate for information. But…when they came into the basement, I just…I don’t know…I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t, hearing that Gamzee had hung himself less than 10ft away from my bones. In the same spot two of the most important people in my life stood while they told me this, without even knowing they were telling me.” he swipes his sleeve across his eyes, suddenly, violently, making me jump.  
I take a risk. I step up to him and pull him into a hug.  
“God you’re really tall.” it seems important to mention, for some reason.   
Significant, that I have to roll up to the tips of my feet just to get my arms around his broad shoulders. Actually- narrow. He’s kind of scrawny. I can feel his ribs pressing into my chest through our shirts. Would he have been like this alive, or is this an effect of death on his form? Touching him is like the charge from an electrified fence, but it doesn’t hurt.  
“That’s what dying is.” he wraps his arms around my shoulders and plants his face in my hair “It’s not when your life is over. It’s when your friends don’t know you exist anymore. That’s when you stop being.”  
I squeeze him a little harder “Tell me about it.”


	17. All that remains of *ME* is more substantial than initially thought

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe how well this fic is doing. We're on the brink of hitting 1000 views, we have more Kudos than i could have hoped for and a heckuva lot more comments than i was expecting. I just felt the need to thank you all quickly. Hope I don't jinx myself with this pre-emptive thanks, but this really is heart-felt. Writing means a lot to me. It's kind of my favourite thing to do and I'm always working on improving and inventing new stories. The readership means a lot to me, from everyone who just pops in, reads the first few lines and goes, to the people who read sporadically, to the people who (i may have imagined) await each update

"Before you guys start throwing things at me, I just want to say I’m really sorry about running off like a…a…”   
Facing the swim team, my old team, I struggle for the term that can accurately describe the way I scurried from all of Life’s challenges with my tail between my legs. They stand at the side of the pool, dripping and curious.  
“A deserting, cock-munching moron.” suggests one of the girls stiffly.  
“A snake.” tries one of the boys.  
“A guy who just had his heart broken.” says another one of the girls “Fuck it, we missed you anyway.”   
She opens her arms and envelopes me in a hug before I can protest. Suddenly, I am at the centre of a very wet group hug smelling of chlorine and Equius is cracking up. Thank goodness no one else can hear him.  
“Ooooh we missed you!” says Yoon-ha, the girl who spoke first. She begins to cry, getting me even damper with her face pressed into my collar.  
“Still crying at the drop of a hat, I see.” I pat her on the back as best I can manage with my arms practically pinned to my sides by someone who has thrown their arms around my waist.  
“We missed your back-stroke,” counters a guy named Ashley “We keep getting thrashed at the meets on butterfly, and everyone is asking where our dolphin went.”  
“Well, I’m back if you’ll take me. I know there’s like half a year left-”  
“YES!” shouts one of the guys towards the back.  
I’m not sure if he’s excited about the end of high-school coming up or the prospect that I might be re-joining the team, if they’ll let me.   
I made the decision last week on the night following Dave and Jade’s accidents. Well, I made the general decision that spurred me to do this: I decided it was time for me to stop sitting back and watching things happen. Of course it would be much more useful of me if I started a ghost-hunting career or hired a voodoo witch thingie, but this is the easiest change to make. Besides, I need the exercise.  
“You had better take a shower when we get home.” suggest Equius, inspecting the quick of his nails   
“The smell of chlorine has an unpleasant effect on my stomach. If you’ve never seen a ghost vomit before then you had best spare yourself the sight.”  
Maybe I’ll get Sol to babysit Equius during my swim-meets. They last about an hour and a half and that might prove too much for his apparently delicate stomach.   
Finally, the group-hug breaks up. A sombre note colours the atmosphere. I steely myself, knowing what is coming. All week, people I have never even met before have been coming up to me under the guise of offering condolences to get the inside story on the incident. Rumours are already zooming around the school. On Monday, the first day the school was opened again after the incident, the popular story was that Jade had killed Dave and then gutted herself to evade prison.   
“So…” says one of the boys awkwardly “Are you ok?”  
I shrug “As ok as you can be after one of your friends has a melt-down.”  
I’m very careful to paint a certain image of Jade every time I talk about the incident, on the rare occasions that I don’t shoo away the people asking. I tell them Jade has had an awful moment because of a medical condition hitherto unbeknownst to her family and that the doctors are working on treating it, that Dave is perfectly fine and he’ll be back in school by next week. The first half of the last part is true, which is a sentence as confusing as the story for the observers.  
“But Dave’s not dead is he?” asks Ashley “Sorry we just keep hearing-”  
“No it’s ok. He’s fine. He’s alive. He’s coming back to school next Monday.” I glance towards Equius for moral support.  
He shrugs and stops himself from giving me a thumbs-up. Encouragement is not his forte. In fact, as I’ve been finding out lately, anything pertaining to interactions with other human beings is just outside his comfort zone. I thought this it was because he was a ghost at first. But the more I see of him, the more I realise what an awkward nerd he is. On the bright side he diffuses the tension in annoying and serious moments inadvertently, by just floating a couple of feet over the heads of the people I’m talking too. The sight of a scrawny guy with a ponytail reclining on thin air as casual as you like makes it pretty hard to focus on the drama.  
“Have you seen him?” asks another one of the peanut gallery.  
“Yeah. He caught a bad cold in there, so that’s why they’re keeping him in, but he should be fine by next week.”  
This is the lie Karkat instructed us to tell whenever anyone asked why Dave isn’t back already, and when I say ‘instructed’ I mean he actually made all of us rehearse it before they left my house. Lucky for me, the old team is satisfied with my response.  
Hope is just starting to bloom in my chest, tempered with a happiness, the idea that things might actually turn out ok if I work hard enough, when the coach bursts out of the locker room. Legend has it our coach was alive in the times of the cavemen and was hailed as a god of war by his tribe. The worship was so intense, so passionate it imbibed a real immortality in him and he has lived on through the ages since then, torturing the innocent and waging war on the flabby and never once shaving the hairy pelt that was the fashion in the times of his birth.  
“ALRIGHT GOATS, BACK IN THE WATER NOW NOW NOW LET’S GO GO GO!! THAT MEANS YOU TOO AMPORA! I WANTED YOU IN THAT SUIT TEN MINUTES AGO! YEAH, YEAH IT’S A MIRACLE, I KNOW, THE PRODIGAL SON HAS RETURNED! “  
Even the invisible Equius snaps to attention. Such is the power of a lone, shouting hairy man in shorts. I resist the urge to dive into the pool in my clothes and swimming to safety, with some extreme effort. Everyone else jumps in and makes for the opposite wall frantically. In their identical suits, they look like a colony of penguins fleeing from a leopard seal, which incidentally our coach bears a more than slight resemblance to as well.  
Equius puts his hand on my shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze.  
“You’re a braver man than I.” in the coach’s presence he feels compelled to whisper even though I’m the only one who can hear him.  
I mutter out of the corner of my mouth “Just don’t distract me.”  
“CARE TO SHARE THAT AMPORA?!” bellows the coach.  
Bellowing is his inside voice.  
“Just a fly sir.”  
“TAKE THAT NECKLACE OFF!!” he orders.  
I glance to the necklace nestled in my collar and purse my lips then say brazenly “I can’t sir. My grandmother just passed away, you see, and in her will she specified that her grandchildren should all wear a pendant of her finger bone to keep her memory alive for the rest of the year.” I touch the bone and the look of sadness that comes to my features isn’t entirely faked “It’s a policy within my family that we always honour the wishes of our late loved ones.”  
A couple of the girls make sympathetic coo-ing noises. Eq isn’t all that impressed by my performance, though, shaking his head in a sort of big-brotherly disapproval.  
The bone is his of course. Lugging around his entire skeleton in a backpack would be stupid and impractical and above all unjustifiable in its level of creepiness. But it was also problematic to carry around the vertebrae. Dave even noticed it yesterday when Karkat, Sol and I visited him in the hospital, but I managed to distract him from the issue by asking him when he was going to be discharged. As for Dave’s problem the news is so far not very positive, but I have been able to fix my problem by picking out the smallest fragment of bone and stringing it on a necklace.   
For some reason, Eq’s bone is entirely freezing now. I’m not going to question it- he follows me around with perfect ease and can retreat when he wants to and it makes my life a whole lot easier not to have a big chunk of bone bouncing around in my pocket. We won’t be separated anymore either. Not if I can help it.  
The coach grudgingly agrees to let me wear the necklace. I change quickly. Putting on my swimsuit is like putting on a second, more comfortable skin.  
I have always loved swimming. It’s funny that I don’t remember and realise how much I really do until I dive into the pool. My dive is a little sloppy owing to a few months of idleness, but I get a round of moist applause from the spectators anyway. They watch, clinging to the sides in the row furthest from me. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t make me nervous.  
But Equius is also there. Tinted a delicate shade of green by the chlorine already, it makes me want to laugh just to look at him. Eq is in the process of surmounting the final challenge: death. Why am I so freaked out by a try-out for a swim team I was the star of less as recently as June of this year?  
This will be a piece of cake.  
As ordered, I start with backstroke.   
Backstroke is my favourite. Not my best, but my favourite. The swimming facility is equipped with a giant skylight that extends the length of the pool. When I float on top of the water, it’s like I’m swimming through the clouds. I loved that feeling, the sensation that I had drifted into the sky, away from all my earthly concerns and worries. With nothing else in my limited field of vision and my hearing blocked by water, sometimes I was so transported it came as a brutal shock to me when I reached the end of the lap.   
Until humans evolve wings, this is as close as we’re going to get to flying without help.

The first two strokes go brilliantly. Even the coach seems impressed that I haven’t lost my edge. Hell, I’m totally amazed myself! These past few months I’ve let myself basically waste away. It’s likely I would have withered completely if I hadn’t uncovered Eq, chilling in the basement with his remains. Nothing like meeting a dead boy to make you reassess your priorities.  
The problems start when it’s time for freestyle. For those of you who are non-swimmers, freestyle, or front crawl, puts you on your front with your arms cutting and pulling through the water in front of you. You swim with your head down for some time, unlike in breast-stroke and butterfly when your head has to be ready to break through the surface on each stroke.  
When I swim with my head down, it gives me more of a chance to look at the bottom of the pool. There is a layer of greyish silt clinging to the tiles, dust and dirt brought into the pool by the swimmers, stray hairs and hairbands, the occasional pair of googles no one has bothered to retrieve, and much more rarely, you might see a girl dressed in a billowing, white dress sitting amongst the debris and watching you with enough malice to leave you breathless.  
This is what I see.  
She catches me totally off-guard. Startled, I break to the surface and fake a coughing fit. Pretending I have inhaled some of the water, I swim to the side and catch my breath. I squint through the water. Of course, she is gone.  
Whatever she wants to do, I’m not going to let her do it. I am not going to be intimidated into staying in my home all the time, to limiting my contact to nil for fear of hurting everyone who gets close. I don’t know who she is- someone important; a random ghost Gamzee Makara enlisted to help make my life hell- but I know I have seen her before.   
She hates the fucking water.  
“Are you ok?” calls Yoon-ha.  
I straighten my goggles “Fine.”  
I look to Eq. He’s tense. I can tell he has no idea what has upset me. So I lower my head and kick-off, letting myself glide back into the lane I am using.  
And I whisper into the water : just swim with me.  
She stares back at me with the same lifeless black eyes from my dream. I feel as if I am watching a scene in a movie. If I break down in tears and scream my head off, as the script instructs, nothing will be accomplished aside from destroying what chance I have of getting back on the team. I’m kind of sick of counter-productive behaviours when I know it’s not gonna get me shit.   
I’m kind of tired of everything. I just want to swim again.   
I want Feferi back too, but swimming is something realistic that I can do right now.  
So I swim. Beneath me, she drifts exactly parallel to me like a piece of plastic trash caught in another current. It hurts to look at her, like it used to hurt to look at Eq. My limbs are leaden and my lungs burn, but I stick to the pace I have set even with spots dancing in front of my eyes and a deep fire in in my tissues. The water is like ice.  
She draws closer and closer. Soon we are nose-to-nose. I count the freckles on the bridge of her nose. She reflects my eyes back at me with an expression so sour it transcends the scary into downright comical. A pouting child.  
Then the lap is over.   
I break through the surface of the water and clutch the side of the pool. I look up at Equius, then prod at his shoe with my finger and am reassured to find how solid he is. I smile at him. He smiles back uncertainly, crouches and helps me out of the pool. I don’t care how weird it must look to the rest of the group as I set on the edge of the pool and scrape the hair out of my face. They must not have noticed.  
“Welcome back Eridan!” says Ashley.  
The coach mutters a grumpy assent. The pool is empty again, unsurprisingly.  
“Good to be back.”


	18. All that remains lies in the hospital

“It was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me.”  
Dave squints at the ceiling. They confiscated his shades at some point, so his poppy-red eyes are exposed to the world. He probably doesn’t realise he’s even doing it, but he’s been carefully avoiding making any form of eye-contact with us since we came into the room. He looks at the ceiling instead of us, or out the window, or turns his face to his pillow.  
“I couldn’t control my body. I wasn’t in my body. I could see myself on the floor, but I was looking from above. And this random motherfucker in black starts tearing up the room and I’m taking this scalpel to my wrists- I don’t even know where I got it- and I’m back in my body and there’s blood all over the floor and the guy is standing over me with…like…ok, you know the Exorcist, that scary ass little girl’s face when she’s smiling at the camera and speaking French and shit. That face. Sort of that face. I don’t know.”  
Karkat gives me a significant glance “You know they never found this guy right?”  
“Karkat, do you really think I had the strength or the reason to smash up that room in 30 seconds flat? Why would I cut my wrists?” he holds up his swathed arms “I have a fuck ton of shit I wanna do before I die. I don’t want to die. Now I’m gonna spend the rest of my life convincing Bro, too.”  
Another look. “The doctors say you have some problems.”  
“Fuck the doctors. I coulda told you that.” he groans and pinches the bridge of his nose “You tell me I’m messed up like its news to me. I have issues, Kat, but not huge, towering issues that make me wanna kill myself.”  
Angry, Karkat crosses his arms and glares out the window “Denying it won’t make it go away.”  
I am beginning to feel bloated with the amount of guilt filling me up inside. Touching the pendant, I glance at Equius who sits in front of the window (securely locked safety glass) and search for something to say.  
“I believ-v-ve you.”  
Dave and Karkat look at me. Dave regards me like an interesting specimen of insect he has discovered nesting in his bed sheets.  
“Why?”  
“You’ve nev-v-ver lied before.”  
His eyes are wide “No one else believes me.”  
“I think Rose does. You know what she’s like. One foot in science the other in the occult.”  
Karkat gapes “Uh, earth to Ampora, we’re trying not to indulge Dave’s delusion here.”  
I tug at the string of the necklace “Has Dave ever lied?”  
He shifts in his seat “No but-”  
I continue “Sometimes he doesn’t talk about stuff. The stuff he doesn’t talk about would be the stuff he’d lie about. So if Dave really w-wanted to kill himself, then he’d just clam up and turn aw-way and be embarrassed to have been caught. He w-wouldn’t make up this extrav-vagant lie. Would you Dav-ve?”  
Dave is still a little wary “No.”  
“In fact…I’m thinking that the only reason he w-would tell us this is because it’s true. At least for Dave, it’s true. W-we’re his friends.W-who’s going to believe him if w-w-we don’t?”  
Karkat looks a little ashamed. Now he doesn’t know what to think. I’m telling him to throw his entire perception of reality into the trash and accommodate new, impossible ideas for a friend who has just dramatically proved himself unstable, in his eyes, with no other reason than to make that friend feel better. He sighs in disgust, caving.  
“You’re always the one who denounced fairies and Santa.” he mumbles.  
“That’s because Cro and Pa said those w-were real and both of them are pathological liars.”  
Dave snorts “I don’t want to talk about it.”  
“There he goes.” I pat him gently on the shoulder “Now he’s lying.”  
Dave turns on his side with a finality that leaves us no other choice but to leave. So we do, closing the door gently behind us and say no goodbyes. We’re going to see him again tomorrow anyway.   
“Where’s his dad?” asks Karkat.  
“Home I guess. He w-w-was here for a w-week straight.”  
Karkat looks at me in a similar, slightly repulsed way that Dave did earlier “You don’t believe in ghosts or demons.”  
Equius walks in stride with us.  
I shrug “The truth is stranger than fiction.”  
“You’re full of shit.” announces Karkat.  
“Amen to that.” says Equius.


	19. All that remains of us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here comes the plot.  
> Here comes the pacing  
> Brace yourselves, people, things are about to start happening

I make no claims to be a medical expert, or to have any kind of medical knowledge beyond the fact that it’s bad when you bleed, but when I see Jade I can tell she’s in for a seriously difficult recovery. Not by the forest of cords leading from her arms to drips, the machines chirping around her. Not from the swathe of bandages biding her chest and her midsection. It’s her expression.   
Dazed and pained. She’s absolutely swimming in sedatives, so she can’t feel any physical pain, but what’s inside her head must be bad enough to cripple her. Her eyes are glazed over and trained on the ceiling. She takes no notice of Sol, who sits at her bedside and holds her limp hand. He is filing her nails flat. Wincing, I notice a row of red scratches on her neck.  
“Did she do that?”   
Sol glances up at me and gives me a look I don’t quite know how to interpret “Yeah. She’s been quiet for the most part…when I came in there were all these scratches on her. The nurses didn’t notice a thing.” he points to her shoulder, which has been clawed raw and red “Got a little itch, huh Jade?”  
Her eyes flutter at the sound of her name. She turns her head slightly to look at Karkat and me in the doorway, but loses interest in favour of the ceiling after a few seconds.  
“Jade,” Karkat tries “Dave’s going back to school next week. The bad news is he tried to off himself after you gave it a shot, but he’s going to be fine.”  
Sol gives him a reproachful look.  
He shrugs “I’m exercising my right to be pissed off at her. She stabbed Dave. I’d like to know why. In fact, why aren’t there any guards in here? What if she tries something?”  
“Shut up.” mumbles Jade, surprising all of us.  
“How do you feel?” I walk over and pat her awkwardly on the leg “You look like shit.”  
“Thanks.” she rasps “Is there water?”  
Sol hands her his water bottle and watches her take a measured sip, as if he’s afraid she may try to choke herself with it. The effort of taking the drink seems to exhaust her. She hands it back to Sol and sinks into her pillow, letting out a shivering breath in pain. Her lips curl back from her teeth. Tangling her fingers in the sheets, Jade closes her eyes tightly. Her knuckles are white as she grips Sol’s hand.  
“She’s in shock.” says Equius in my ear “Her body wasn’t made to accommodate the dead. Her nerves aren’t sure how to react to what has happened to her, so they’re flooded with pain.”  
I give him a quizzical look. One of these days I’m going to have to find out who his Padawan master is, where he’s getting all this information from and such. I have a few things I want to ask myself.   
“Can we do anything for her?”  
“Call the nurse.” suggests Karkat flatly.  
He avoids looking at Jade, but the anger is plain on his face. He’s not ready to forgive her. While the rest of us have been suggesting tumours and blaming a random fit of insanity, Karkat has grown steadily angrier. It took some serious convincing to get him to visit her as well as Dave when we came to the hospital. What finally convinced him was my threat to drag him by the ankles if he didn’t go willingly. Between Karkat pitching a little fit, the rest of the group’s confusion about Jade’s random psychosis, the other ghost, the other ghost in the pool, Sol avoiding me like the plague and having a dead boy follow me around, I’m just not sure how much longer I can last before I cave under the pressure myself.   
We try talking to Jade for a while, but she has little interest in what we have to say. She doesn’t want to know how we think Dave is doing or about the tests at school she’ll have to make up for. Equius tells me this is a natural part of the recovery after a possession, especially a demon possession. Apparently her thoughts are just too scrambled to order properly. Again, I make a mental note to myself to really grill Eq about his sources. Eventually a nurse makes an appearance -in his anger, Sol pretends to faint from shock and gets us speedily ejected from the room. Jade lets us go without a word of goodbye, which Eq also assures me is nothing to worry about and by this time I want to pop him in his mysteriously corporeal jaw for being such a know-it-all.  
We’re walking towards the bus-stop. I don’t really want to go home yet. At home, I’m listless, feeling useless and am desperate to be outside even though there is nowhere to go.   
“I’m going home.” announces Karkat. He squints up at the weak sun and pulls his hood over his face “Do whatever you want.”  
“You’re leaving us on our own?” Sol is offended.  
So am I “W-why? Do you w-want to lose another two friends?”  
He’s already getting on the bus “Kankri’s home.”  
Ah. No wonder he’s been so pissy.  
Karkat and Kankri have never gotten along and probably never will. Karkat has spent most of his time trying to get out of the shadow Kankri still casts over this city, our school, but he can’t quite run fast enough to escape his brother’s legacy. The less said about Kankri the better. In fact, the less said about any of our brothers, the better.  
Sol and I look at each other.   
“You need to shave.” he notes.  
Equius snorts.  
“You need to gain some weight.” which he does.  
Sol has never weighed more than 110lbs in the whole time I’ve known him. Come to think of it, Equius doesn’t look too far over the 100lbs mark either. Why is every boy I know so dangerously thin?  
I start to walk towards the park- the same one I went to on the first day I saw Equius if that has any kind of significance. For lack of having anything better to do, Sol follows me at a safe distance. I don’t think to tell him to fuck off. The chaos of the two weeks has taught us to tolerate each other.  
Sol trails behind me as we pass under the shadows of trees. His glances around us, searching for something. Someone. I don’t care. Equius rests inside the pendant quietly. Overhead, another rain storm brews.  
“You’re going to be eighteen next week.” says Sol unexpectedly.  
There’s that same gazebo where I took refuge just last week from the guy who I’m now wearing around my neck. A trip down memory lane. I barely hear Sol, already focussed on how quickly and crazily the last two weeks have gone. I drop onto the bench, grateful to be off my feet.  
“Eridan?” Sol waves a hand in front of my face “Are you in there?”  
“Fuck off.”  
He settles at the other end of the bench “You’re in there.”  
I’m acutely aware of the tension. We haven’t talked to each other much. At school, I was practically ignoring him and vice versa, and here we are sharing a park bench like a fucking couple.  
“What are we?”  
I look at him “W-what do you mean, ‘what are w-we’?”  
Equius’s bone shivers, like a phone vibrating, as if he senses something coming that he doesn’t want to be here for.  
“I mean…are we just guys who know the same people?” he pulls his collar up over his mouth, and slouches deeper into his hoodie “We were kind of friends before…”  
“Feferi.” I don’t think I like the way this conversation is going.  
Neither does Equius, going by how cold he has become.  
“Before FF. But we weren’t at the same time. We’ve never liked each other, have we?”  
I glower “Of course fuckin’ not. Remember the first day a’ school you called me w-w-wizard suckin’ nerd ball?”  
“Reduced him to tears when he made it safely home.” adds Equius.  
I swat the pendant. God, he’s like a mortifying brother or something. “You w-w-were a total dick to me for no reason.”  
Sol slouches a little more “I’m a dick to everyone. You’re not special, and that’s your problem right there. You need to be special, don’t you? You’re always looking for the reason someone’s being a dick to you or nice to you and you just can’t accept it’s a part of the person’s nature, ‘cuz if you’re involved, it has to be personal.”  
Bristling, I take my glasses off and wipe at the lens frantically “That’s not…that’s not always true.”  
“Most of the time it is.”  
“Shut your zombie trap!” I turn on Sol again “Yeah I hav-v-v-v-v….I got problems, but you don’t…gotta be such a dick about it! You just don’t like me, do you? You’v-v-ve alw-w-ways had a problem w-with me! You’re jealous or something!”  
He scoffs “Why would I be jealous of you? What the fuck do you have I could conceivably want? Crippling narcissism? A stripy scarf? An obsession with magic even though you hate yourself for wanting to believe in it? Why would I want anything you have?”  
“Beats the hell outta me but you must have some reason for being such a psycho!”   
The rain starts to fall.  
“Uh, I don’t know, let’s try bipolar disorder? You could give me some fucking credit you know! It’s really tough to keep this shit under control, especially with you riding me since we were like five for no other reason than that you’re an unbelievable jerk-off!”  
“Me?” I can barely articulate I’m so mad “Me? You fuckin’ started this! You coulda backed the fuck off w-w-w-whenev-ver you w-wanted, but no! You just kept going for me!”  
Equius cuts in “That is more than enough.”  
“But he-” I try.  
“He’s such a penis-” starts Sol.  
Equius materialises between us, his expression thunderous “You’re both morons.”  
“That’s not fair!” protests Sol.  
“No, it’s generous.” Equius pinches the bridge of his nose, forcing his anger down “I’m going to tell you what I have observed the past seventeen years of the two of you and you’re both going to shut your confounded mouths and listen, understood?”  
I nod sullenly. Sol sinks even further down, so his head is now level with his knees.  
Equius takes a deep breath “Eridan, you think you’re the centre of the world. You were making a valiant effort to change that view for your family and friends’ sake, and for the most part, you have become a better person. The only hitch is Sollux. You revert back to your childish, narcissistic ways around him. You’ve never forgiven Sollux for not liking you immediately and I’m not too sure why, because none of your friends liked you immediately, did they? Not even Feferi. However, I do have a few theories as to why Sol is a special problem. The most likely is that you are jealous of him.”  
He pauses here, waiting for an outburst from me. When I’m silent, he relaxes just a little and continues “You’re jealous because Sol has been struggling with a mental illness for almost as long as you have, but unlike you he hasn’t driven people away with his. His case is so minor you might not even notice it when he’s on his medication. You, on the other hand, you have to wear it on your sleeve because it affects your personality. And Sollux.”  
Sol withers into the bench.  
But Equius seems to relent a little “I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I?”  
“No.” says Sol sourly.   
“Perhaps you could go easier on him…considering the circumstances.”  
Confused, I thump Equius on the arm “W-what the fuck are you talkin’ about? Rant at him too!”  
Sol won’t look at me “The circumstances are the same, except now he can see what I see. Nothing’s changed.”  
“W-wait a minute you w-want us to bond over dead people?”  
Equius gives me a glare “Be quiet Eridan.”  
“I don’t see why you hav-ve to get inv-v-v-…into it. Not your problem.”   
“Yes it is.” He gestures to the necklace “I have to listen to you two go at each other all day. Might I remind you there is a hostile demon haunting us and the two of you are more interested in exchanging verbal barbs than doing something about it? I’m not going to indulge this kind of nonsense. Mark my words, the next time you two start a fight I am going to stick one of you on the ceiling and set you on fire.”  
I don’t know Equius well enough to know if there’s a teasing smile lurking under that grimace. For now, I’ll believe what he says.  
Unsure of what to fill the silence with, I watch the rain come down. It’s light this time, not the driving sheets I sheltered from the first time.  
Finally, Sol speaks “You were out here the first time you saw Equius weren’t you?”  
“Yeah.”  
He straightens up and scoots a little closer, so half of his rear isn’t hanging off the bench “What happened?”  
“None of your business.” I regret saying that as soon as the words are out of my mouth.  
Equius peers at me over the top of his glasses.   
I take a deep breath, and try again “Might as well tell you anyway.”  
“No shit?”   
“No shit. I was in the basement digging out a suitcase of the egg donor’s stuff for Pa. He was gonna take it to the dump I think, or maybe cuddle it in bed and w-w-w-weep over the bitch. Whatever. I was messing around in there trying to get the damned thing out when I sent a ladder crashing into the wall. It punched a hole in the wall and that hole in the wall held Equius. The next thing I know this terrifying ghost is like,” I pause to illustrate the action, groping in mid-air “Grabbing the sides of the wall and tugging himself out of the wall. God, I nearly shat myself.”  
Sol starts to laugh. Unable to stop myself, I join in and soon all three of us are laughing like a bunch of idiots. I can’t remember hearing Equius laugh before. I wonder if I expected some transcendently beautiful noise like wind-chimes, or the breeze that soothes a summer sun. Nah. It’s just a nice, normal laugh, but it sets me off even worse. I collapse onto my side, bumping up against him.  
“I had no idea what you were doing,” he fights to get his breath back “I was resting, contemplating the meaning of the afterlife and suddenly a ladder crashes through the wall and hits me on the head.”  
My ribs ache “You scared the living shit outta me! Why didn’t you just say ‘oi get off my bloody lawn you dumb kid’ or something? I mean, fuck, instead you start grudging out of the wall!”  
“I didn’t know what was going on!” he protests “I didn’t think you would be able to see me!”  
Sol’s wheezing by now “You’re both such dorks. Oh my God. You suck, both of you suck so hard!”  
At this point I’m not even sure why we’re laughing. Still, it feels good.  
By the time we finish, tears are rolling down Equius’s cheeks, Sol is almost hysterical and I erupt into school-girl giggles every time I think about it. I have slumped onto Equius’s shoulder for support. I have nearly forgotten he isn’t alive until I realise he has no pulse.  
“Ok, I need to go,” says Equius, and in an instant he has retreated into the bone.  
With no prop, I collapse sideways across the bench. My head lands in Sol’s lap. He pushes me away quickly, his laughter turning nervous briefly. I straighten up.  
“We tired the old man out.” I note.  
Sol swallows hard “Yeah. We did. How’s he doing?”  
I shrug “Shoulda asked him that when he was here. He’s doing ok, I think, but it’s hard on him to hang around now that he’s solid. He’s not used to it yet.”  
“Can he hear us?”  
“Yes.” says Equius.  
Sol smirks “It’s like having a pokéball around your neck, huh?”  
“Yeah.”  
The rain keeps coming. We’re going to have to stay here until it stops, since neither of us brought a raincoat or an umbrella. With this in mind, what I’m about to ask may not be the smartest thing. It may throw a wrench in the possibility of spending a semi-pleasant afternoon, or at least one that I can survive, with Sol, but I need to ask. No one else will talk about her and I need to talk about her if I’m ever going to move past what has happened.  
“Hey.”  
He catches the serious tone in my voice, and the smile is wiped off his face “What?”  
“She didn’t hint anything to you, did she?” I’m not asking; it’s more like I’m stating the fact with a dreadful certainty  
“Not a goddamn word.” he says quietly “Same as you.”  
“She still call you?”  
He nods “Once or twice every week.” he bites his lip and trains his eyes on the ground. He knows that’s much more than I hear from her “She talks about you. She says she wishes she hadn’t left the way she did. Full of shit.” his lisp butchers the words.  
A heavy feeling settles on my shoulders “Yeah. She is full of shit. She’s sweet, but she’s never been reliable. I guess that’s my fault though. When your best friend needs you waiting on him all the time you sorta have to decide when you’re gonna be there for people.”  
Sol shakes his head, suddenly agitated “No it’s not all your fault. Only like 40% of it’s your fault. You’re doing that thing again where you think it’s your fault, if you’re involved. I can’t believe you’re actually taking blame for something. Like, I’ve never seen you accept something is all your fault except for when FF’s involved too. You don’t need to bend over backwards apologising to her for being an ass anymore by taking all the blame and being the bad guy and all that shit. She’s gone and she’s made it pretty fucking clear she doesn’t want anyone following her.”  
Shocked, I stare at him.  
Feferi left in September. Since then, Sol has made a special effort to stay out of my way and then to jam as many insults and barbs into the encounter as physically possible when our paths did cross. Sol hates me. Sol would never defend me, and here he is, slamming the blame on his girlfriend of two years in favour of protecting me, someone he’s been competing with since kindergarten for everything. Friends’ attention (we always seemed to share them), grades, video games, the number of classic books we’ve read, how intelligent and worldly we seem, who can eat more popcorn in one sitting (Dave wins that hands-down when he’s there), pretty much everything. The only thing I have ever won is who is better at sports; I can swim like a dolphin and Sol is far too scrawny for anything but track to be an option for him, which he hates.  
The only thing he ever won was Feferi.  
“If you hate her so much why are you talking to her?”  
He reacts as if he’s been slapped “I don’t really want to! You think I wanna pursue a long-distance relationship with that bitch, after what she did? If I ignore her she starts spamming me, though, worried that I’ve offed myself! This one time I ignored her texts and e-mails and calls for a day and by the end of it she had called Karkat to go over and check on me because she was worried I was in the bathtub with my wrists cut open, like Tuna went! She doesn’t give me any credit, or any room to break up with her. I don’t know what to fucking do. It’s not like I can freeze her out.”  
This too is news to me. A faint voice whispers at the back of my head, smug and thick with satisfaction: ‘serves him right’  
My mouth is dry “Change your number.”  
“I did once. She called the landline until Dad picked up and then I had to pretend my phone had broken and I was getting a new one. I don’t know what she wants from me.” he throws his hands up helplessly “I’m just gonna keep talking to her until she loses interest and believe me it’s waning.”  
“You love her don’t you?”  
I don’t know where that came from.  
Neither does Sol “Did you hear a fucking word I just said, Ampora, or is your head jammed so deep up your ass you can only hear your intestinal gas rumbling now?”  
I can’t help but enjoy how flustered he is getting. It’s like my reward for putting up with the two of them kissing in front of me and practically wearing each other for two years, for making me the third wheel as if my friendship was only in the background of Feferi’s life. I love this, actually. I love hearing that their relationship has crumbled and maybe that there wasn’t much to it in the first place.   
I love it.  
“But you love her.” I repeat, not bothering to feign confusion “You two are the perfect couple. Everyone at school knows it. Always together, always helping each other out and so respectful of each other.”  
“Oh fuck you,” Sol turns his shoulder to me “You’re getting off to this aren’t you, you sick fuck.”  
“W-w-what do you w-w-w-w-want me to say? Sorry the relationship that was centred around stealing my best friend from me isn’t going too w-well?”  
Even as I talk, the heavy feeling gets heavier and heavier, which is weird. I have fantasised about hearing this kind of thing out of Fef’s mouth for years; doubts about Sol’s worth as a boyfriend. This should still be delicious, even though it’s coming from Sol. In fact, why not even more so because it’s Sol? If there’s one thing that has never failed to give me pleasure in the past, it’s watching Sol suffer. If you don’t count Mituna’s suicide.  
He mutters “I don’t know what I thought I was gonna hear from you.”  
Now would be a really great time for Equius to jump in and chastise us both for fighting again. Funny how he buggered off even though he knew something like this was bound to happen. Funny how he hasn’t said a word since he confirmed he was listening, either.   
“Eridan.”  
“W-what.”  
“Let’s not make this into a song and dance about FF.” he suddenly looks very tired and very ill “I’m fucking sick of talking about FF. I’m sick of hearing about how everyone is so sorry about her. It’s kind of refreshing to hear someone telling me I deserve it, but I still don’t want to hear any more about her. FF is gone so let’s just let her be gone already.”  
“I’m fine with that.”  
Surprisingly, I am. My life has been put into perspective for me. Ok, so I was betrayed by possibly the only person I’ve trusted on a spiritual level in all of my nearly 18 years, but there are ghosts. I can mourn about it and waste all of the time I want over a person who clearly didn’t care very much about me, or I can focus on the proof of an afterlife who I happen to be wearing around my neck right now.  
Sol’s right. It’s time to let Feferi be gone already.  
“What do you want me to do?” asks Sol.  
“Help me out, I guess.”  
The rain doesn’t stop for another hour. We don’t say another word to each other, not even a goodbye when the sun comes out.


	20. All that remains of Feferi

It’s about time I dispensed with the pleasantries and just explained what happened with Fef, isn’t it? I think the audience has had enough of the vague hints and this cloak-and-dagger nonsense that I’ve treated the whole incident with. I know I have. So here’s what happened.  
Feferi Peixies had been my best friend for a long time. A little further back then the start of kindergarten, since our parents knew each other as business associates. We were raised with each other, kind of like in an arranged marriage situation. Having been brought up so close together I guess we felt obliged to be best friends for the rest of the foreseeable future. It’s not as if there were no common interests and qualities that we appreciated about it each other to keep us together, but in retrospect we may not have been the best people for each other. We took each other for granted and as a result, I don’t think we ever quite learned how to treat each other right.   
Tragic, I know. To summarise most of our relationship, we spent more time driving each other up the wall over little quirks and small, insignificant incidents in the day-to-day life than we did enjoying each other’s company. Don’t ask me why we didn’t just friends-divorce. I guess it was like marriage in some ways: if you’ve been with someone for a long time and you love them that much, then you don’t want to just give up no matter how many cracks there are in the bedrock.  
Although Feferi’s official stance was ‘putting up with Eridan’s shit’, she did do some stuff that she wouldn’t have done if she was really ready to commit herself to our friendship. The biggest thing I can think of is her relationship with Sol. She may have actually had a crush on him you know –this could be wishful thinking on my part- but I think the real reason she started a thing with Sol is because she needed an escape route. Sol was the emergency exit if I wanted to do something and she simply couldn’t stand another second of my company.  
I understand why she needed an outlet- a prince on a white horse, if you will, to rescue her from the fire-breathing dragon. Feferi needed to worry about herself too and when I was around, there was really only one person she was allowed to worry about. Sol was her coping strategy. He made her feel better about herself and better about her project (me), renewed her strength so she limp back to me with a smile on her face. Over time, she did grow less and less interested in spending time with me and more interested in spending time with Sol. The thing is, she wasn’t kind about it. I don’t want to go into the subtle little things she did to let me know our time together was drawing to close. There’s too much stuff to go over and I’d really rather not re-live those moments. Reliving this will be just humiliating enough.  
‘This’ refers to an afternoon at the start of the year. We were about two or three weeks into school. I was at home with Dave and Karkat on my couch, vegetating in front of some horror slop on the TV when Karkat said he wanted to see something with quality acting and style out the wazoo. So we called together most of the gang with the intention to go see the newest Wes Anderson movie, but none of us could get a hold of Feferi. Not even Sol, who usually knew exactly where Fef was and what she was doing, be it cooking, pissing or showering. (Knowing what I know now, I guess he might have had a constant Feferi live-stream because she insisted on it).  
We went around to her house, all of us, intending to berate her for leaving her phone off. Feferi had easily the biggest house out of our group. She lived in a veritable mansion towards the outskirts of the suburb. Her garage was always occupied by two of three top-of-the-line sports cars and the house was buzzing with servants. Seriously, her family was ridiculously rich, with a butler and everything. Who has a butler in this century?  
When we got to the house, there were absolutely no signs of life. Her garage was completely empty of cars and the usual assortment of junk and there were no lights on in the house. Knocking at the door got no response, so Karkat and I went around the back and climbed over the fence like we always did, but her backyard was empty too. The pool was drained and the deck chairs were gone. Fortunately, the back door was unlocked, so we managed to get in. While Karkat let the others in the front door, I went straight up to Fef’s room on the top floor, my head churning. I noted that the halls had been stripped on my way up. Most of the doors were locked, including Fef’s.  
I stood outside for about ten minutes knocking uselessly. Once or twice I considered knocking the door in, but I didn’t try.   
I reconvened with the others in the front room. They’d gone searching the place and reported a similar state of desertion around the house, everywhere.   
Feferi had moved without telling us. For the past week, she had kept us away from her house with a variety of excuses. They must have had movers in the house, boxing up everything. I realised that I had noticed a lot of things missing from the shelves in her room over the past months, a lot of little knickknacks she claimed she had gotten rid of, or out-grown, or had never had in the first place and accused me of mixing her up with Kanaya.  
While we were sitting on the main staircase in the living room passing around suggestions, one of us finally managed to get through to her. She explained unapologetically, unabashedly, that she had moved. The plans to move had been on the table for half a year. She didn’t tell us because she didn’t want to go through months of awkward goodbyes, she said, she didn’t want to do all of her favourite things with us with a sense of sadness because we knew it would be the last time. Feferi explained she wanted to have the best memories possible of her time with us to take with her to the new city, more than halfway across the country, and the only way she could think to do that was by pretending there was no end in sight.  
She told me she was sorry, but wasn’t it better, because knowing me I would have sulked the entire time and not enjoyed our last couple of weeks together? She told Sol she was still his girlfriend, definitely, and long-distance relationships are much easier than people say.  
I got up and left as soon as she started on Sol. Rose left with me in a huff, too disgusted to speak, and we walked away from the house arm-in-arm. I’m not too sure what happened after that. I do know Karkat was so mad at Feferi for literally running out on us without a single warning that he took the axe from his dad’s shed and chopped down a tree in their yard that had been blocking the view from his window for a year. I do know that Dave refused to contact Feferi again after the way she left, and that although John and Jade tried to keep up a correspondence with her, they couldn’t quite forgive her and gave up after a month. I do know that Sol smiled a little more after that, because sometimes when I glanced at him in passing in the halls at school, I saw the hint of a smug, satisfied smile that I always assumed was there for me, mocking my pain.  
Everything was kind of blurry after that weekend.  
I don’t know when I started to drift or when I quit swimming or when my family became officially concerned. This long stretch of, well for lack of a better word, darkness, was lit only by the occasional phone call from Feferi. When we talked, I pretended that I understood and in no way absolutely hated her for being the most shallow, selfish and altogether shitty friend on the face of the planet.  
This went on for much too long then a ghost crawled out of my wall which is where you guys came in.  
And that’s the story. I wish I had a better story to tell, but that’s really all that happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the sorta-big reveal didn't disappoint you guys too much.  
> I know, I know, it would have been far more dramatic if she had secretly stolen something of Eridan's or cheated on Sol or something, but instead you get a surprise move across the country.  
> Shit happens.


	21. All that remains has my number

I guess I’m making some good progress.  
I mean I should be, but I don’t know how to progress. Ok, I’ve decided I’m going to help Eq get out of here. How I’m going to do that? Search me. After spending another basically sleepless night staring at my ceiling and playing around with some possibilities in my head, I finally decided the only thing I could plausibly do would be to ask Rose.   
A word about Rose: creepy. She’s just straight up, straight down creepy and of course I love her for it. We’ve been friends for a long time. She is the one who tells the best ghost stories and who marches into the supposedly haunted properties without a jot of fear. She investigates the strange noises outside the house at night and comes back to report to the rest of us, clinging to each other in fear, that it was just a couple of foxes making love and the bottom of the yard. She’s creepy, but she’s very intellectual in her creepiness. I suppose Rose has been standing with a foot in the enigmatic world of the occult and the cold, hard logic of reality long enough to find a good balance. Naturally, she seems the proper person to ask about ghostly nonsense.  
It’s a smart idea in my head.

“Do you really think it was a demon?”  
We’re sitting in a coffee shop, fresh from the hospital. Dave is coming back to school tomorrow – Mr Strider’s going to drive him straight from the hospital- and Jade is finally starting to respond properly. The long road to recovery doesn’t look so long now that Jade’s case is beginning to be evaluated and Dave has insisted on not pressing charges, although his father/brother/whatever will probably never let him go near Jade outside of school again.  
Rose responds without a pause “It could have been. It could be a tumour too.”  
“Something with an actual documented medical history.”  
She frowns at me “There are plenty of documented cases of demonic possession. Priests are still trained as exorcists in the Vatican. Granted, a lot of the cases of possession occurred in the days when the supernatural was a convenient excuse for doctors who had no idea what they were dealing with, but what about the more recent cases? Annelise Michel in ’73, Roland Doe, the inspiration for that movie that made you wear a cross for a month...fuck, I’ve totally forgotten the title, but you get the idea. Pope Francis did a live exorcism in 2013. Alright, you can blame that on hysteria, an expectation to perform in front of cameras. I’ll accept that. Still, I think it’s arrogant to believe science can explain everything.”  
She waits for me to challenge her. Usually, this would mark the start of a long, convoluted argument that ends in a competition to see who can come up with the most creative insults.   
“I guess you’re right.”  
She nearly snorts cappuccino up her nose “Come again?”  
“I said I guess you’re right. Science can’t explain everything. Or maybe it can. Maybe there’s a science at work under our noses and we just don’t have the technology or means to sniff it out.”  
Rose stares at me. Her eyes flick to the bone pendant, then back to my face. I do my best to keep my expression earnest, but the shock on hers really makes me want to laugh.  
“Stay strong.” urges Equius.  
For him, I will.  
“What? I’m going to be eighteen in six days, Rose. It’s about time I did some growing up. Only about a hundred years ago, science told us the ideas of tiny organisms causing disease was impossible and stupid and we should drop it immediately. Now, germs are a law. Maybe it’ll be the same with the occult in a few decades.”  
I take a sip of my coffee and watch her mouth open and shut like a stranded fish’s through the steam.  
Finally, she collects herself “That’s very mature of you Eridan.”  
“I know. Giv-ve me a gold star or something.”  
“You should know I’m not an utter fool, though.” she reaches across the table and taps the pendant “I know there’s something going on with this.”  
“Ask her not to do that, please.” says Eq “She just poked me between the eyes.”  
I try to keep my face neutral “The bone? That was from Cronus. I think it’s a fishbone or something. You know what he’s like. Always sending back weird little tokens of affection.”  
That’s not a lie, per se. Cronus does send me all kinds of weird stuff. I have a shoebox under my bed of all of the stuff he’s sent me over the years, from postcards from his city with nothing written on them but a drawing of a dick to knitwear. Actually, he knitted me this vaguely fashionable, vaguely awesome purple striped scarf last year and I haven’t gone a day without it since he did, as a sort of ‘fuck you’ in his face because he probably didn’t expect me to touch it. I’m wearing it today and I don’t care how many ‘ew it’s a hipster’ stares I’m attracting.  
“This is strange even for Cronus.” she gives me a searching look and tilts her head to the side “I mean, this borders on the occult.”  
“Let me stop you there before you start saying I’m being possessed by the owner of this bone. If I was, I would be jumping into fountains and eating algae, Rosie. This is a fishbone not the bone of some kind of crazy serial killer.”  
Rose narrows her eyes at me “How do you know?”  
“Because Cro is studying marine biology. Also, he brags about almost all of his social and sexual exploits. Believe me if he were grave-robbing, he would tell me. He’s not quite intellectual enough to be hanging around with serial killers either.”  
“Not like me.” she cocks an eyebrow, finishing my thought.  
I’ve entertained the idea that Rose has mind-reading abilities on and off for the last five or so years. This last week has blown that theory out of the water, because if she could read what was going on in my head she would have pounced on solid evidence of the paranormal like an owl on a mouse.  
“What do you really want to ask me Eridan? Cutting the shit and all.”  
This is just going to completely incriminate me in Rose’s eyes. If she wants to investigate me, then let her evaluate and investigate and prod and poke me until something satisfactory comes out. She’d be a useful ally- the only reason I haven’t brought her on board already is because…I don’t know actually, but Equius is kind of the type of thing I don’t want to go spreading around my friendship group. “I just wanted to ask what would we do if it was a demon.”  
“Call in a priest. Exorcise it.”  
“So what, strap Jade down to the bed and march the Pope in and start smacking her with a Gutenberg?”  
Rose rolls her eyes “It’s not that simple I’m afraid. Jade isn’t a baptised Catholic, so the church isn’t necessarily obliged to assist in her case. Besides, she would have to be evaluated and the criteria wouldn’t be met, since she has yet to barf pea soup and spin her head around 360 degrees and speak in dead languages.”  
“Darn those Catholics. Always causing problems.”  
She smiles a little “You could ask your dad to exorcise her. Your uncle is a priest, isn’t he? Cary must have picked up something from him.”  
I shudder “One, don’t call him Cary. His name is Mr Ampora, or Mr Dualscar sir, if you need to invoke the first name. Two, we don’t talk about my uncle.”  
We really don’t. We haven’t talked to him either in about four years, around the time Cronus edged out of the closet. My uncle is the definition of a religious nut. He interprets the Bible word for word. Among my fondest memories of him is the last time we saw him, when he filled up a water gun with holy water and chased Cronus around the yard with it, telling him he was going to ‘exorcise the rainbow demons’. His words, not mine.   
Pa thinks he may have some kind of mental illness that found an outlet in religion.  
Rose finishes her coffee in one gulp “If the Catholics don’t work out we could find an Orthodox Jewish community.”  
I frown at her “You got that from ‘The Possession’ didn’t you?”  
She shrugs “I’m fairly certain that movie is based on a true story.”  
We’re hip-deep in this nonsense and I still haven’t gotten close to an answer. It’s not like I can march up to a Catholic priest or a Rabbi, wave Eq’s bone in their face and ask directions to Heaven. I don’t want to exorcise him either. From what I know of exorcism (and most of my knowledge is derived from ‘Beetlejuice’) it destroys the ghost or slingshots them into the bowels of Hell. If Hell is really a thing.  
Suddenly, I’m feeling deviously clever “So…let’s say Jade has some kind of possession, yeah? But it ain’t malignant. Her possession is like…I don’t know, a little lost boy who just wants to go back to his mommy? All the ghost wants to do is move on?”  
“Oh that’s simple enough.” she waves her hand dismissively “Unfinished business. We’d have to figure out the unfinished business and help the ghost finish it then we can kiss the problem goodbye.”  
I must be the stupidest thing on two legs. Seriously, how did I not guess that? Of course Eq has unfinished business! He has no idea where the girl’s body is- Nepeta, that’s her name. He doesn’t know where her body is.  
Eq does tend to go completely silent when I’m talking to others, but I wish he would speak up now. While he may have told me how he was killed, he never suggested he might be stuck in this world because of his unfinished business. I can’t quite believe that he knows enough about his world to identify Gamzee as some kind of demon but somehow he didn’t guess that it is Nepeta that keeps him anchored in this life.  
“Anyway, I know Jade doesn’t have a demon.” Rose flashes me a sheepish smile.  
“Oh God. You did not.”  
She nods “Just to be safe.”  
“Tell me you did not sprinkle our injured friend with holy water while she was sleeping.”  
She looks away, tugging her collar “I see no problem with it.”  
“Did you bless it yourself?”  
“No. I went to your old church and took a little bit of water away in a bottle.”  
I smack my head on the table “Rose. That’s not ok. Stealing holy w-water from churches to spray Jade is not ok.”  
“Don’t tell the others. Especially not John.”  
We leave the coffee shop, headed for a bookstore. Rose and I follow a pattern when we go out together: coffee, bookstore. We’re the nerds of the group and we enjoy living up to our titles. She loops her arm through mine as we walk, which makes us look like a couple. Rose doesn’t understand why this embarrasses me.   
“What are we going to do with you?”  
“Hm?”  
“You’re eighteen in a few days. You’re inching out of a depression and two of us are hospitalised-”  
My phone rings in my pocket, cutting her off.  
Pulling it out, I notice the number calling in isn’t recognised in my contacts “Hello?”  
There’s silence on the other end of the line.  
“Who is it?” asks Rose.  
I shrug, handing her the phone so she can hear the static “No one is talking. Let me call my dad. He might be calling me on one of his work-buddies’ phones. He’s totally useless at technology.  
Pa picks up after two rings “Eridan?” he yawns “What’s up?”  
“Did you just call me?”  
“No.”  
“Oh. Someone did and I couldn’t hear anything. Nev-ver mind, I’ll check in with Cro.”  
So I do. Cronus is surprised to hear from me. Usually he’s the one who calls home on a Thursday night to let Pa know he isn’t dead from an overdose yet, and inform me about some of the horrors that await a naïve virgin like me on the college campus.  
“What’s wrong? Is the dog dead?” is the first thing he thinks to ask.  
“No Ahab’s not dead.”  
“Is Pa sick again?”  
“No Pa’s not sick again. I just got a call and I couldn’t hear anything. Thought it might be you.   
“Why would I be calling you?” he laughs “On a Sunday? No, wasn’t me. I have better things to do than harass my little brother all the time.”  
“Things to do,” I mutter “But no one to do.”  
Then I hang up before he can retort.  
Rose snorts “You two are getting along famously, as usual.”  
“It’s not my fault he’s a dick.”  
The moment I’ve stuffed my phone back in my pocket it starts to ring again. Rose and I exchange a glance. In the same way as the first call, the number is listed as ‘unrecognised’ and there is no one on the other end of the phone. This time I don’t trying talking. I just hang up.  
“Turn off your phone.” suggests Rose.  
“This is creepy. Silent phone calls as we’re talking about ghosts,” I nudge Rose in the side, attempting to appear jovial “I think we’re under attack, Rosie.”  
She jabs her finger into the distance “To the church! To claim sanctuary!”  
The crowd is thick. We’re down-town, where the streets are packed and people are shoving and rude. This city has never been known for its friendliness. Actually, we’re kind of close to the part of the city where Dave lives. His apartment block is just across the train tracks. Given the condition of Dave’s neighbourhood, which he calls a ghetto, Rose thinks the fact that he lives on the other side of some train tracks his hysterical.  
We might even drop in on him if he were home today. Dave tells us ‘the ghetto’ is too dangerous for us ‘privileged’ kids to venture into, but we’re usually safe provided we don’t make eye-contact with anyone for too long.  
It kind of surprises me how much I miss Dave right now, even though he hasn’t really gone anywhere.  
And the fucking phone rings again. Rose gives me a look “Didn’t you turn it off?”  
“Yeah. Switched itself back on.”  
She furrows her brow “I’ve never heard of a phone doing that.” she reaches into my pocket and tugs the phone out then says into it angrily “That’s enough, thank you.” and ends the call “Let’s not answer it again, alright?”  
I nod “Weird stuff comes in threes, I guess.”  
“Don’t answer.” Eq speaks for the first time in a half hour.  
Ok, obviously it’s that demon guy. Not answering.  
“What were you saying earlier?”  
We have reached the bookstore by now and Rose hauls be over to her favourite section, psychology, without missing a beat.  
“I was talking about you. It’s your birthday next week. I’m afraid we’re not going to have much to celebrate this year.”  
“Yeah, well,” I can’t pretend I’ve thought much about my birthday coming up “There are more important things to worry about than me getting slightly older.”  
Rose tugs a heavy volume off the shelves and checks out the blurb “Oh shut up. Eighteen is a milestone. You’re excited and you know it. I’m just saying it’s a damn shame your last birthday in high-school has to happen at the same time as the rest of this stuff. What do you want to do?”  
“Dunno,” I say truthfully “I figured I might just stay at home with Pa and Ahab. Cronus’ll call.”  
This will be the first birthday I’m aware of having more people than expected in the house to acknowledge the occasion.  
She gives me a glare over the top of her book “We can’t have that.”  
“What?”  
“We can’t have you inching back into your shell when we’ve just gotten you out again.”  
I roll my eyes “Well, what do you want to do?”  
“John’s said he wants to bake you a cake.”  
I snort “John? Baking? He hates baking.” which is kind of weird, since he’s excellent at it. We call him the Batter Witch- the things he can do with a simple package of Betty Crocker cake mix border on magical.  
“He likes you,” points out Rose “He’d do it for you. He’s especially grateful for the way you’re treating Jade…it’s odd Eridan. The rest of us don’t quite know how to act around her after what happened, but you’re behaving as if she’s just regular old Jade with a bad case of the ‘flu.”  
John has spent a lot of his time in the hospital, although he always seems to be elsewhere whenever one of us arrives. The general consensus between Rose and I is that he’s ashamed of Jade and therefore embarrassed to face us. It may be that baking a cake on my eighteenth is more of a thing for John than it is for me, but whatever.  
My birthday is a bit of a joke among my friends, given its date. Personally, I think most of them are glad of an excuse to spend Valentine’s day in an unromantic setting. All of us are depressingly single, although I could point out a few of us who have been nursing crushes on each other for an unhealthy length of time. Rose and Kanaya for instance- I’ve never understood what’s stopping them from getting together and having a bunch of surrogate babies.  
“Jade’s still Jade.”   
Rose smiles now “Maybe you are growing up.”  
“I beg to differ.” mutters Equius.  
The phone rings again. I ignore it this time.


	22. All that remains of Ahab

Do you ever get that sense of foreboding?  
It’s exactly the same as being frozen in place in fear, except you’re not sure what you’re afraid of. The kind of fear that sticks you in the mouth of a dark hall, so your feet are itching and your mind is telling you to go forward and it the fuck over with already, but for some reason you can’t quite convince yourself to walk into the darkness. Although logic and common sense dictates you are wrong, somehow you just know that there is something waiting in there. Maybe you’re going to walk straight past it and it will never make its presence known, or maybe you’re finally going to meet what you’ve been afraid of for so long.   
This foreboding. This ice that has frozen me to the doorstep has me cold and silent even though Equius is asking me what’s wrong and his hand is pressing lightly on my shoulder.  
What am I afraid of? The demon, Gamzee, he would be the obvious answer. But it doesn’t feel like the demon is behind this door. It doesn’t feel like a single thing is behind this door that I wouldn’t expect to see. And yet, I’m still stuck here.  
“Eridan,” he says “What is it?”  
Finally, I figure out what it is “Do you hear Ahab?”  
Normally I can hear Ahab coming a mile off. Crashing into the walls as she ping-pongs down the hall, barking her fool head off and panting with the effort. I can’t hear a thing.  
His face grows dark “No. I don’t.”  
He knows what’s wrong too, now. He lives with us. He knows what to expect and he knows this isn’t at all right. Even if she was somehow in the backyard, we would hear her barking and her claws scrabbling on the fence as she tried to jump it.  
I look at him and the fear must be plain in my eyes, because he swallows hard. How weird this must look to the neighbours. Weirder still as Equius bats my hand gently off the doorknob and opens it himself. It swings open and there it is, that dark, empty throat of a hall with the two of us at the mouth and suddenly I’m eight years old and too scared to make the short walk to the bathroom in the night because I know I will walk by something that is not my dog, my father or my brother.  
And even now, with that stranger standing beside me, I’m too scared to go inside.  
The smell of blood hits me a second later. I’m stuck in a memory again, and this time I’m seven years old and Cronus is carrying me, using all of the strength in his twelve-year-old body, back to Pa telling me it’s going to be ok. The black head of a nail is embedded in y bare foot and the sharp shaft is sticking out of the other end, glistening red and dripping. It hurts too much to cry, or to speak properly, so when Pa sees me and blanches and asks what happened it is Cro who has to speak because whenever I open my mouth a jumble of ‘w’s pour out on a loop I can’t seem to stop.  
Equius passes me.  
“Ahab.” he says.  
It’s never occurred to me that the dog will answer to him. Then again why shouldn’t she? Certainly does explain the times when she randomly barrels around the house and stops in front of an empty space and starts to jump up like she’s trying to put her paws on somebody.  
She doesn’t answer.  
Equius hasn’t exactly given me the courage to go in, but he has given me the motivation.  
“Ahab!” I shout, closing the door behind me.  
She barks and relief washes over me. I look to Equius and laugh nervously, but his expression has gone from confusion to shock.  
“Call her again.” he orders.  
“Ahab!”  
Another bark. Sounds like she’s in the basement.  
“One more time.”  
“W-w-what’s your problem?”  
He gives me a look that suggests I shouldn’t back-chat again, so I call her one more time.  
She barks again. That’s when that sense of foreboding comes back with a vengeance. She should have run up to us by now.  
Equius walks to the top of the stairs into the basement. His expression doesn’t change again, though his shoulders do slump.  
“Eridan. Come here.”  
Dread knots my stomach. The walk is less than five steps, but I feel like I am lifting my legs through syrup. I glance down the stairs.  
A small, ragged bundle lies at the bottom of the stairs. There’s a large dark pool around it which stopped expanding long ago, but by some trick of the light it seems to get bigger and bigger the longer I stare at it. There’s a fainter, heavier smell underneath the scent of blood, kind of like the garbage cans at the back of the butcher’s.  
I try one more time, as if searching for confirmation “Ahab?”  
Before Equius can answer a bark comes from directly behind us, startling us both badly. We turn and see Ahab, sitting on her haunches and panting happily. She leans forward and licks Equius’s leg. When she tries to do the same to me, her tongue dissolves around me, as if it is made from mist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just killed the best character in the story.


	23. All that remains of Ahab...again

If I live to be two hundred years old and spend that entire time with Equius leaning over my shoulder, invisible and full of advice and watching me the entire time, even then I don’t think I’m ever going to do anything stranger than burying my dog in the backyard as the dog’s ghost watches me cheerfully from the porch. Equius and I spent about ten minutes debating as to what we should do. Pa would not take it well if he found out some mystery physco broke into the house and sadistically killed the dog with what proved to be the kitchen meat cleaver and then decorated his work with the needles from my sewing kit, so we pretended it had never happened.  
I couldn’t see it in the dark, but most of the dog’s skin and fur had been removed and re-fitted like a coat. When I tried to pick her up, my hands slipped and I came away with fistfuls of blood-matted fur. Equius held my hair up while I threw up in the kitchen trash. The second time around, we took a sheet from the linen closet and rolled the dog’s body into it. Ahab trailed after us from room to room. While we carried her body to the back of the yard, she tried to lick up the blood trail her body left and snuffled in frustration when her tongue passed through the floorboards. Didn’t stop her though. Eventually Equius took pity on her. He dipped the tips of his fingers in a puddle of her blood and let her lick them clean, despite my protests.  
I dug a hole underneath a tree at the back of the yard with Equius’s help. It’s nowhere near as easy as ‘Supernatural’ makes it look. The shaft of the shovel tore my hands up so they were red and bleeding and peeling by the time the hole was deep enough to both accommodate Ahab’s body and so that Pa wouldn’t notice. He likes to work out in the yard sometimes. Usually he makes me mow the lawn in the winter, but in the summer he turns into one of those fantasy husbands that plants flower gardens and citrus trees and would totally be having some kind of romantic night rendezvous by candlelight with his imaginary wife while the kids were sacked out, if his wife wasn’t imaginary. The danger that he’ll find the dog’s shallow-ish grave is not very large, but still if I catch him wanting to do some planting over there it’d be best if I volunteered to do it for him.  
Fuck was my mind wandering all over the place when I buried the dog.  
It’s like I couldn’t let it rest on one topic for more than half a minute without my thoughts straying towards the blunt truth of what I was doing. Burying my dog after a demon killed it.  
Burying my dog in the backyard so Pa wouldn’t notice and inventing a believable cover-story as I did. Finally Equius and I decided I would tell Pa that Ahab was gone by the time I got home, that I would call Sol as soon as we had finished burying the dog to help me clean up the blood. Also, I kinda just wanted to see another human being with a pulse. Equius ended up having to fill the grave in. By the time I had made it four feet deep or so, my hands were torn to hell and I had thrown up about three times. I’m still not used to physical activity after that long break from swimming, and there’s nothing as strenuous and hellish as digging a deep, wide hole in packed dirt.  
Which brings me to this moment.  
I’m collapsed on the couch, covered in dirt and sweat, my phone jammed up against my ear and rehearsing what I’m going to say to Sollux to convince him to come over. Actually, I’m a tad concerned that using my phone is going to result in me getting in touch with the demon instead of Sol. But luck appears to be on side for the moment, or at least, logic.  
He answers after three rings “How do you have my number?”  
“Gamzee killed my dog.”  
“Who the fuck is Gamzee?”  
“It’s the demon’s name.” I inspect the crescents of dirt under my nails “According to Eq. Eq’s not the only ghost in the house now. Ahab is sittin’ right next to me and she keeps meltin’ through the fuckin’ couch. Can you get the fuck over here an’ help me scrub up the blood so Pa will believ-ve me w-when I say the dog ran off.”  
“I’ll be there in twenty.” he hangs up.  
Equius is in the armchair. He looks pretty wiped out, although it’s probably not from the physical strain of digging a hole.  
“I’m sorry.” he says quietly.  
“Eh.” I try to pat Ahab on the head, but my hand passes through her.  
It’s like dipping my hand in a cooler.  
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”  
“Of course you don’t. You’re not crazy. Listen, let’s not start a fight about w-whose fault it is and w-w-whose fault it ain’t, let’s just get the bleach and start cleanin’.”  
Equius takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, like he’s about to sneeze “Aren’t we going to wait for Sollux?”  
“W-w-w-why?”  
“Didn’t you want his help?” Equius cocks an eyebrow “Why else would you call him over?”  
I gesture to Ahab “It’d be kinda nice to have someone else helping us make sense of this. I don’t know-w-w-w! No offense to you dead folk, but I kinda w-w-want someone with a pulse around!”  
Equius holds a hand up “No offense taken.”  
I get up, regret it immediately and sit back down heavily.  
“Just wait for Sollux.” urges Equius.  
“I don’t w-want him to see me like this. W-what are you smirkin’ at? I’m filthy, that’s all.”  
“So shower.”  
I glance nervously around the room “Eq, you’ve been watchin’ horror films over my shoulder for like five years, yeah? Tell me w-w-what happens to people who insist on show-werin’ w-when there’s ghosts and demons about?”  
“They die.” he suggests.  
“Or at least get the shit scared outta ‘em w-with a serious jump-scare. Do you w-wanna add shit in the show-wer to our list of stuff we gotta clean up ‘fore 6,” I check my watch “Which giv-ves us a grand total of tw-wo hours to w-w-work w-with.”  
“I’ll sit outside the bathroom.”  
By the time Sollux does show up thirty minutes later, I have washed and dried but not brushed my hair, so I answer the door look a little bit like I just fought my way out of a wet bush. Ahab gets there before me, barking her head off joyfully. She charges with all of her usual grace and ends up slipping into the door, then straight through it, to her utter delight. I hear Sollux yelp presumably as a ghost-dog barrels through his knees with little warning. There’s a thump. Turns out, that’s Sol falling over. When I open the door he’s on his butt on the doorstep trying to fend off a ghost-tongue that can’t touch him but is doing a fair job of terrifying him.  
He struggles to his feet “Oh my God Eridan I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you were serious.”  
His lisp is so thick I basically get another shower “Uh, yeah, as if I’d joke about the dog dyin’.”  
Equius dodges around me and catches Ahab by the collar, tugging her into the house. Sol reels back at the smell of blood.  
“God!” he exclaims.  
“Nope. More like the devil.” I say dryly “I was thinking of burning sage to get rid of the smell, or making a really fragrant dinner before Pa gets home.”  
Sol wrinkles his forehead “Are you sure- sorry (he notices he’s spitting in his excitement and covers his mouth with his sleeve) are you sure you want to spend the night here? I mean, if the demon can get in to kill your dog- and besides ghosts can walk through walls. I don’t get why he hasn’t offed you by now. He’s had all kinds of opportunities.”  
“Gee, thanks Sol. I dunno why I ain’t dead yet. Might have somethin’ to do with…hey Eq, w-why ain’t I dead yet?”  
He shrugs “I suppose he wants to have a game before he kills you. Can’t imagine he’s had much in the way of entertainment since he committed suicide.”  
“I’m so confused.”  
“Grab a sponge, get down on your knees and start at it and w-we’ll explain.”  
So we do. The blood is surprisingly cooperative- all it takes to get it up is a little bit of bleach, a lot of soap and water and a whole lot, lot, lot of scrubbing. Sol’s eyes grow wider and wider until they remind me of 3D glasses. He gapes as Equius describes the killing. Funnily enough, it doesn’t seem as painful to Equius to recount the way he died this time. Perhaps sharing the pain has made it less painful? Then again the pain was the pain of actual death, so maybe the little ghost (hee hee) of a smile I see in the corner of his mouth is just from Sol’s expression, which looks like a cartoon character’s face in that second when they’re hanging in empty space, their legs still pumping, realising they have just run right off a cliff.  
I think about telling them about the girl in the pool. Did I ever tell Equius about her? Surely that must be Nepeta, but Equius didn’t notice her at all. He helped me out of the pool without hinting he had any idea that his best friend from another life was floating in there with me. Was it not her? Did he see her, and just not want to talk about her?  
With every answer I’m given there are a hundred more questions that follow them. If that was Nepeta than is she in league with Gamzee, some kind of undead Stockholm Syndrome? If she’s independent from him, why isn’t she trying to get into contact with Equius? Maybe she’s very weak and that little episode in the pool was all she could manage, and what she said to me was some kind of code? I don’t know what I’m supposed to extract from “I hate the fucking water” apart from that she hates the water. I already know she was probably drowned, since she was tossed into the water after a blow to the head. If it’s a code, it’s a pretty shitty code.  
“How…how come there aren’t any legends about this?” Sol’s furious lisp cuts through my thoughts “Shit like this would normally become an urban legend. Dumb teens would be daring each other to go out to the bridge at midnight- the bridge over the river, it’s the one near the highway, yeah? God, that place backs out onto a swamp and everything. That’s like the ideal setting for a dumb teenager dare and then one of you pops up like a woman in white and chases off the dumb teenagers and…dumb teenagers, Eq! How come nobody knows about this?”  
He shrugs “I doubt Gamzee would have told anyone. The way he timed it was admirable actually. My father was out of town on a business trip and my little brother was staying with our cousins on the other side of the country. There would have been no one to miss me, really, until my father noticed I hadn’t answered a call or an e-mail in a while.”  
He stops, uncomfortable under our stares “What?”  
“You hav-ve a little brother?”  
He shrugs “I stopped worrying about him after the first decade. He’ll be twenty-seven years old now. He’s probably working, married and raising a couple of kids by now.”  
“And that doesn’t bother you?” splutters Sol “You’re never going to see him again?”  
I toss a pillow and hit him in the face “Shut up Sol!”  
Equius smiles wanly “Of course it bothers me. I’d like to know if I have a niece or a nephew by now, or if Rus killed himself because he couldn’t deal with the grief of losing his only brother. But there’s no way for me to know, is there? I have to assume the best has happened and be content with that.”  
“W-what w-w-was his name?”  
“Horuss.” he smiles properly this time “Obviously, Dad was having a joke when he named us. Horuss and Equius.”  
“I don’t get it.” says Sol.  
“Never mind.”  
I force myself to my feet “Alright guys as fun as this is, we need to do something about her.” I point to the dog who is melting into the couch “This whole house smells like a murder and I need to know Pa won’t be able to see her.”  
“What are you gonna tell him anyway?” asks Sol.  
“I’ll say the dog was gone when I came home.” my chest feels heavy as I say it.  
What a horrible thing to lie about. This will haunt me, literally, for the rest of my life.  
Obviously Sol is thinking the same thing, because he pats me on the shoulder, like actual willing physical contact “It’s gonna be ok. He probably won’t see her. Eq’s been here for the whole time and he’s never seen him, right?” he turns to Eq for confirmation, but Eq stays silent.  
I rush to agree anyway “Sure. You’re right, for once. Let’s just get this over with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pardon the inactivity. A downside of being in a Christian family, you know, celebrating all these silly holidays.


	24. All that remains of Sollux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow it has been an embarrassing length of time since I updated. Sorry.  
> Until very recently I was in India, doing my vacation, so I didn't have the time to update or write.

I couldn’t quite get Sol out of the house before Pa came home.   
To cover up the smell of blood and the fainter one of meat that had begun to decay, we did everything from torching some more sage from the garden to digging out the old scented candles Pa keeps around in case of a blackout. Sol and I were so caught up in our task we didn’t notice Equius telling us Pa was pulling into the drive, or getting out of the car or coming up the drive. Finally he got our attention by knocking our heads together just as Pa was coming through the front door, and by then it was too late to shove Sol out of a window.  
So this explains why he’s sitting at my table eating dinner with my family right now.   
Honestly, I’m not sure which one of us is more uncomfortable with the situation. Given our ‘history’ this is more than awkward enough without the additions of my freshly dead dog panting lazily at Pa’s feet, or with the dead teenager leaning against the counter, solid as can be, but somehow still invisible. I’m starting to feel sorry for Pa. It’s almost like he’s caught in the middle of one big practical joke. I’m waiting for something to go wrong.  
Every time Ahab went by me she took a cold breeze with her, yet Pa hasn’t so much as shivered even though she’s done everything from bark at him to sink straight through him when she tried to put her paws on his legs. He hasn’t asked where she is yet. I think he’s more preoccupied with the fact that Sol and I were alone in the house for an unspecified amount of time.  
“Have you picked your college yet?” he asks Sol.  
Sol swallows quickly and chokes a little, but he rallies “Uh, yeah. I’m headed to the same one as everyone else. They have a really good IT department there. There’s no point in moving further away from home than I have to. Not right now, at least.”  
“Seems to be a tradition here, doesn’t it?” Pa chases a pea around his plate with his fork “I don’t hear of many of the kids going to other colleges.”  
“W-well it is a good one. The campus is cheap too.” I rack my brains desperately for the other stuff Cronus has told me about the university “Sports teams don’t suck balls either.”  
Sol snorts a grain of rice up his nose. Since I fell out of the habit of existing, I stopped eating dinner with my friends’ families and have completely forgotten my table manners in the presence of polite-ish company. If he found out that Pa was working late and wouldn’t be home to eat with me, Karkat made a point of dragging me over to his house to eat with his family, probably because he was afraid I wouldn’t eat if I was alone. He must have gotten his concerns about me crossed with his concerns about Sol.  
Pa gives me his ‘you’re embarrassing me and yourself’ glare. Ok, ok I get it Pa: the way we talk when it’s just us is nowhere near an acceptable way to talk when there are other people around.  
“I understand Kanaya is joinin’ the football team.” he looks to Sol.  
Sol is trying to be sneaky about snorting the rice out of his nose “She is, she is. She got scouted at the game last month.”  
I feel a pang of guilt. A game that I missed.  
Pa grins “The only girl on the team?”   
Sol nods “She’s going to own the field. Starting out as a quarter-back or whatever. That thing on the team the jock does.”  
“Good for her. If the university is lucky, she may even pave the road for an evenly mixed co-ed team.”  
I clear my throat and kick Pa under the table, wincing as my foot goes through Ahab. The last thing I need is him airing his politics in front of Sol like a bunch of dirty laundry, a progressive or not. If I don’t stop him now he’ll be talking about gay marriage before I know it. He has this kind of complex, like he needs to prove he isn’t bound to traditionalist views because of his religion to my friends and my God, the embarrassment never ceases.   
“Speaking of which, has the coach talked to you about the university’s swim team yet?” he asks me.  
I shake my head “He talked to Yoon-ha and some of the others, but I don’t think he quite believes I’m back for good yet. He might have something to say after the meet next week.”  
God I hope that goes well. The random ghost in her white dress may not have reappeared since her debut, but with the way my luck has been going recently anything is possible.  
Sol gives me a funny look “I didn’t know you were swimming again.”  
“Yeah. Four times a week from 4 to 6.”  
“He smells like a pool.” adds Pa fondly.  
“Agreed.” says Equius.  
It must seem weird to Pa if he notices me shooting the wall a dirty look, but if he does, he doesn’t remark on it.  
Sol looks at me uncertainly out of the corner of his eye. I return the stare and he turns away quickly. Sol is doing that a lot more lately.  
“So…so how is Cronus doing?”  
Pa cocks an eyebrow, surprised that Sol wants to talk about somebody’s older brother. Ever since Mituna died, the parents of our group have handled Sol with kid gloves, as if he is the brother with the crippling mental disease instead of the one who is dead. Early on in the game Sol made it very clear that he didn’t want ‘brother’ to become a taboo because of what had happened, and neither were ‘suicide’ or ‘razor’ or ‘bathtub’ or ‘bipolar’.  
I kick Pa under the table “Cro? Oh he’s fine,” fishing the pendant out of my shirt, I twist it around my fingers “Sendin’ me weird shi-uh…paraphernalia, as usual. He still calls every w-week.”  
Equius shivers “Will you stop that? You’re making me itch.”  
Pa’s eyes have glazed over. He stares into the table-top like it’s a crystal ball that will show him what his son is doing at this very moment “I hope you boys won’t hesitate to call home once you’re gone.”  
Here we go.  
I kick him again “Yes, Pa, I’ll call every single night and cry about how bad the food is compared to your magical dinners and how fuckin’ mean the whole school is an’ how fuckin’ bad I wanna come home.”  
Pa laughs “You damn well better, lad.”  
Sol’s eyes flick between the two of us, as if he’s never seen anything stranger.  
Equius is at his side in the literal blink of an eye, putting a hand on his shoulder gently. Not for the first time tonight I have to wonder what it’s like at home for Sol, especially with him and his dad. While he has banned any kind of special treatment because of Mituna’s death, he did lay down some new rules. We don’t go over to his house anymore. In extreme situations, for example, if he’s sick and needs his homework delivered to him, we have to hide his stuff under the doormat in a plastic bag then call him to let him know it’s there.   
From what I’ve seen of the outside of his house, the place has yet to fall into ruin or turn grey and cheerless, knowing that one of its inhabitants will never come home again and such. It looks like a normal house even to those of us who know better.  
I don’t get what Sol doesn’t want the rest of us to see, but with the recent advent of supernatural activity I have a feeling I’ll have to ask.  
“I heard Kankri Vantas has come home.”  
Now it’s my turn to snort rice up my nose.   
Sol comes to my rescue “Yes, he did. Only briefly, though. I think Mrs Vantas is afraid her mom, KK and Kankri’s grandmother, is going to die soon, so she wants to be surrounded by family for support.”  
Just goes to show how much more Karkat tells Sol than he tells me. I knew Kankri was home- Karkat complained a while ago about having to go home to his loquacious sibling. If Pa knows than news of Kankri’s arrival has already made it around the gossip circles and he’s probably much more informed on the situation than I am.  
Equius appears behind me and pats me on the back, helping me dislodge the pesky grain. I sneeze it into my paper napkin and pitch it into the trash, hoping Pa didn’t notice.  
Kankri happens to have a history with our family. With Cronus in particular. Things were said, most of which were lies, both of them did some stuff they have either come to regret or wish they had the chance to do to one another again. Cronus never told me the specifics of the scandal and since the rumours were saying shit like ‘Kankri’s a transgender boy and got pregnant off Cro’, I chose not to place my faith in them and kind of let the whole thing wash over my head. Soon Cronus (and Kankri) was off to college and as a result I have basically no idea of what happened. All I know is Kankri and Cronus had a seething row that Cronus won’t talk about and Pa has forbidden me from asking about. On the bright side, Karkat doesn’t hate me for it so I try not to trouble myself.  
We’ve been sat with Pa for far too long. Sol, Eq and I have a whole list of sensitive subjects to talk about, or rather, I have a checklist of information I want to bully out of them and something inside me tells me time is running short.  
I give Sol a significant look. For a moment his face is blank, then he makes a show of checking his watch.  
“Dad said he wanted me home around this time. I think I had better start walking back.”  
I stand up “I’ll walk you back.”  
Sol manages a smile for Pa “Thanks for dinner Mr Ampora. It was great.”  
I’m not quite sure who the smile Pa smiles is directed at, since he seems to be looking at the both of us.

“I’v-ve been keepin’ secrets.”   
I start to talk once we are a safe distance from the house, on the next street over. Sol keeps a healthy distance between us and Equius is nowhere to be seen.  
“I know,” says Equius “You saw her, didn’t you?”  
“Her?” repeats Sol. A faint look of horror crosses his features “Fef?”  
I have to laugh “No you dumbfuck. Somebody else. Equius’s friend.”  
“Nepeta.” says Equius.  
The way he says her name; softly, sadly. I wish someone would say my name that way.  
Sol furrows his brow “Nepeta? Who’s she?”  
“She died with me.”  
Sol clears his throat “Oh. Sorry.”  
The pendant grows a little colder underneath my jacket “What for? You didn’t kill us.”  
Sol shrugs “I mean sorry you had to go through that shit. Was she your-”  
“Girlfriend? No, but a lot of people seemed to think she was. She was my best friend.”  
“Like me ‘n Fef, ‘cept…I dunno, you probably didn’t knock each other about as much. Emotionally, I mean emotionally! I’m not physically abusive, Jesus!”  
The other two snort. Believe me, nothing weirder than having a conversation about the afterlife that’s punctuated by a disembodied snort or a laugh every now and then.   
“So…so you died with your best friend? And this Gamzee guy that got into Jade, the guy who has it in for Dave, he killed you?” Sol smacks himself on the forehead “Shit! Sorry! That was really dumb, I’m sorry.”  
“It’s alright. I’d prefer not to be treated like a piece of glass, anyway.” Equius gives a kind of sad sigh “Yes, he killed me. He killed her first, actually, and I’m afraid I didn’t try to help her.”  
I jump in to defend him “Well yeah, he shot you in the knee, didn’t he? Besides, you’re only young.” has he ever said how old he was? He looks young “People can’t deal with that kind of crazy shit without training. You’re not a soldier.”  
“True. In life, I was a scrawny, yet inexplicably strong vegetarian.”  
Unsure of whether or not to laugh, Sol jams his hands in his pockets and searches for something to say “So…so what do you think you would do now?”  
“If he comes back? Gamzee already came back.” I remind him.  
He rolls his eyes “No, I mean if Nepeta comes back to see you, not ED.”  
I had forgotten he called me that.  
Self-conscious, he continues “I mean…it’s just that ghosts, when they come back, not everything is there. I should know I’ve been seeing them my whole life. The first one I ever saw,” he shivers, his face miserable “Bloody Mary…she wasn’t a person anymore. She didn’t have a thing you could call an emotion, not even anger. She just exists to be. You know, just to be in the corner of my eye and behind me in an empty room and…she’s just here. She doesn’t want anything from me. I guess when she died, she died with a person in mind who she wanted to haunt, but because she never found that person she kind of lost her focus and then she lost who she was. And now she isn’t anything.”  
Maybe it’s the way the light hits him, but Sol looks very different for a moment. Older. More tired than usual. But also, strangely, like a veteran recounting the story of how he got one of his more impressive scars.  
“Have you ever told anyone else about that?” I swallow nervously “Like, Karkat maybe?”  
He sighs “No ED. You get to be special this time.”  
Why does that make me feel better?  
We round the corner as Sol is about to add to that, but a couple is walking up the street. Sol keeps his mouth shut until they have passed us. Two girls, no one we know from school, but Sol’s eyes follow them all the way up the street and then a little ways down after they have moved past us, as if he recognises them. He has done that before.  
In fact, I notice him nervously watch women on the street all the time. Usually he seems to be attracted to those with hoods on, or who have their face obscured in some other way. I used to think he was just scoping; searching for someone more beautiful than Feferi (which I wouldn’t believe possible). But now? I’m not sure which bits of Sol I think I know and which bits are part of a disguise he has woven for himself, because of those mismatched eyes that pierce through to some realm underneath the one I have seen for almost eighteen years.  
Once the girls are gone, Equius asks “In short, you are concerned Nepeta has lost the centre which made her a person and has devolved into a collection of…of impulses?”  
Sol nods and addresses my chest “Yeah. I’ve noticed, there’s like this core to a personality. It’s the major qualities that make the person who they are at the centre and all the other things, their likes and dislikes and the people who they like to make friends with, that all orbits the centre. If the core of the personality disappears then you lose the centripetal force that keeps the rest of the stuff orbiting, so the person sort of breaks up and disintegrates. You’re left with this debris field. All of that stuff they were drifts around aimlessly, and there isn’t a thing you can do to pull it back together.” his eyes wander up my neck to my face, almost as if he is deciding which sauce he wants to eat me with, and he says softly “Unless that person wants to pull themselves back together….in my experience, anyway. I’d remind you guys I do have a lot.”  
“Nobody’s doubting your expertise…except I am kind of wearing a ghost around my neck,” I pull the cord out and hold Equius’s bone in my palm “W-what do you think Eq? Sounds legit?”  
The bone does a weird sort of jiggle that might be an attempt at a shrug “I suppose. I have certainly found that without stimulation- pardon me that sounds filthy, um, a focus of some kind, it does get a tad misty in my head.”  
“W-what the hell kept you goin’ then?”  
“It was difficult to lose myself in the aimless grief of the afterlife with the pair of you loud boys traipsing around my tomb, not to mention your entourage of louder friends.”  
Equius’s voice rarely betrays anything resembling emotion. Even when he told me the story of his death, he told it with a flat expression and a tone as casual as if he were reading a grocery list. This time, however, I do hear something in his voice. Just a little bit of warmth. Just a little bit of happiness. Like that feeling you get when you have just woken up on a beautiful day and realised ‘oh, I’m alive’.  
“So…what was Nepeta like?” asks Sol.  
It makes me shudder to think of our encounter in the pool “She was a bit off…she looked majorly pissed too. All she said to me was ‘I hate the fucking water’, although she, uh, I guess she sort of swam with me for a little while, then she disappeared when I got out of the pool.”  
“Not you!” again, Sol addresses my chest “I was asking Eq.”  
I zip up my jacket “Can you maybe not stare at my chest when you’re talkin’? It’s really fuckin’ creepy.”  
“Hmm. I wouldn’t know about that. I can only imagine the way she has reacted to being killed and stranded on this side of the veil.”  
“W-w-w-w…hold up a sec, how-w-w-w come you knew-w-w-w she was there?” I break in.  
“From the way you were acting, I suppose…also I could sort of smell something like death on you. Some part of me knew it wasn’t one of the ghosts Sollux insists infest the school.”  
“I don’t know why you guys don’t see them.” he mutters.  
“W-why didn’t you tell me you knew-w-w?” I protest “I know-w-w you think I’m fragile, but I ain’t so fragile you have to pretend nothin’ is happenin’.”  
Equius sounds a little guilty “Well I wasn’t positively certain and I didn’t want to scare you out of the water.”  
“Have you seen any ghosts? I mean apart from the guy I pointed out in the bathrooms?”  
I shake my head “Just the ones you pointed out to me.”  
A shadow slides over Sol’s face, and he pulls his hood over his head “Hmph. The hospital was swarmed.”  
“W-well I ain’t w-w-whatev-ver it is you are. Not naturally. I had a ghost swannin’ around my house for my whole life and I didn’t notice until I touched some of his remains.”   
Muttering under his breath, Sol refuses to face either of us. In an eerie sort of tragic way, he reminds me of his brother. Mituna used to scare me a little. When I was younger, I would subtly step behind someone, putting up a barrier between the two of us. He has never hurt anyone I know of, apart from himself that is, but the younger Eridan was absolutely certain this crazy person wanted nothing more in the world to get him alone and do unspeakably violent, deranged things to him where no one could hear him scream.  
I used to like to imagine my funeral if such a thing were ever to happen, and how the whole town would ostracise the Captor family for producing the phsyco that killed poor little Eridan Ampora. Feferi weeping over my coffin, Karkat bemoaning the widowed state of his friendship and how he would never have such a good friend as I was as long as he lived, and long after the funeral Sol would wander up to the freshest gravestone and admit I was a better person in all my (ten? eight?) years (I forget at what age I traded that fantasy in favour of the one where Sol quietly disappears from our lives) than he could ever hope to become in however many years he had left to him.  
Sol must have visited a relatively new gravestone on his own plenty of times.   
My body seems to move of its own accord, because if I were properly in control of my hand I would not place it on his shoulder and spin him around so that we are facing each other. The harsh yellow streetlights throw up strange shadows on his face, making him appear more tired than any teenager should have a right to be.  
For possibly the first time in my life I have ever sincerely meant it, I tell him: “I’m sorry.”  
He cocks an eyebrow “What for?”  
“I’m sorry I can’t see what you do.”  
“Oh.”   
His eyes are kind of hypnotic this close up. The red is redder than Dave’s or Karkat’s eyes are ever going to be, more like raspberries than blood, and even the blue is an unnatural colour that doesn’t look at home in the face of a living person.   
Where have I seen that colour before?  
Sol pats my arm, removing it carefully at the same time “Don’t be. It’s not your problem. Ok, it sorta is with Eq here, but after he goes it won’t be.”  
“Hopefully.” adds Equius.  
“So, Eq, think about what I said. Next time your friend shows up, if she does, then we might be able to bring her back to her senses. As for the Gamzee problem, I’m gonna think about that tonight. I’ve seen demons before, I think,” he gestures vaguely over his shoulder “This is my street. See you later Eridan.”  
I watch him walk away in the spotlights the streets provide until he is gone, swallowed up by the shadows at the darker end of the street.  
“I think I freaked him out.”   
“I think you did.” agrees Equius.  
And just because it’s one of those days, my phone starts to ring again.


	25. All that remains on the bridge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit that was a long, long chapter. Longest I have ever written. Enjoy eight pages of slow-paced supernatural nonsense.

Call me crazy, but the prospect of returning to a house inhabited by the ghost of my freshly dead dog and by my father who is most certainly going to want to have The Talk again, this time with even more agonising detail and ways to list in which sex can and will ruin my life, it doesn’t exactly make me want to go running home. I don’t care that the demon has begun trying to prank call me again either. I just don’t want to go home.   
After Sol leaves, I’m stuck with the same helpless feeling from the day I first met Equius. He and Karkat had turned their backs on me, leaving me stranded in the rain without any means to escape a horror I was sure awaited me at home. Now it’s the same- helpless and hopeless and oddly, a little bit hungry although I just ate my weight in red beans and rice. Last time, I at least had my dog and the sunlight to protect me. Now, I’m in the middle of a dark suburb with a ghost around my neck.  
“There he is again.” notes Equius “Gamzee, I mean.”  
Taking a deep breath, I tug my phone out of my pocket to confirm this. That blank caller ID again.  
I sigh “Wish he had an ID. 666. I thought horror was supposed to be camp.”  
Retrieving a hat from my other pocket, I wrap the phone up inside it and stuff the bundle back into the pocket, resolute in my decision to utterly ignore the phone for the rest of the night.  
“I’m not goin’ home.” I announce.  
“Fine.” says Equius “Where are we going then?”  
“Take me to the place where you were killed.” the words are out of my mouth before I consider what I’m asking.  
He is silent for a moment. His bone is so cold it seems to burn through my skin.  
“Are you sure?” he finally asks.  
“No. Yeah. This traffic jam ain’t gonna last much longer. I got to start doin’ somethin’ about you. Hav-ven’t you heard? I’m eighteen in two days.”  
“Traffic jam?” he repeats quizzically “Never mind, never mind. As long as you’re sure you don’t mind leaving your father alone.”  
I hadn’t even thought to be worried about him “Why would he attack Pa?”  
“Same reason he attacked Ahab.”  
There is a twinge of pain in my chest. For a moment, I stand in the centre of the street. I can cross the street and continue walking until I feel safe enough to go home, or I can go home to be with Pa. My dog was killed today. Last week, two of my friends were attacked and one of them was almost killed. But Rose, Kanaya, John and Karkat are all alright. Staying with Pa after Ahab’s death would be like following Karkat around with some of Rose’s holy water, ready to fight off any ghosts (which it’s likely I won’t see coming) or demons who dare to come near- there’s no point.   
I relay this sentiment to Equius, still in the middle of the street.  
He mulls over it for a few seconds “If this has to do with being too afraid to go home-”  
“No! It doesn’t! I’m not a fuckin’ coward, ok? I’m just sayin’ there’s no point! Besides, what am I gonna be able to do against a demon?”  
I must look like a crazy person, arguing with no one. So I start to move and consider taking my phone out so it at least looks like a phone call, but I can’t shake this insane fear that the demon will somehow reach through the screen if I retrieve it.  
I cross the street.  
“You stopped him from killing Jade and Dave.” he says quietly.   
A foul taste fills my mouth “I did not. He coulda if he w-w-w-wanted to…he w-w-was only there to see you. To taunt you. He hardly knew-w I w-w-was there.”  
“I don’t think less of you for being afraid.”  
“’Course not,” I growl “My dog was slaughtered in my own house. How am I even going to bloody sleep there tonight?”  
If the circumstances were back to the norm that was before Feferi upped sticks and left, it would be ok for me to call a friend a make an asylum plea for the night. It’s not that I have a reason to get of my house often, not the like the seething rows with his dad that have driven Karkat to sleeping on my floor a couple of nights, or the surprise ‘business trips’ (code for week long benders) that Rose’s mom disappears on every other month or so.  
It just catches up to me sometimes. Karkat is the son of a devout preacher, Rose is the daughter of a determined alcoholic and I’m the son of a cancer patient. When you know that kind of monster dozes inside your parent, it’s like a tumour grows in you too, a hot coal that burns you up inside. There are times when you just need to drop it all and run for a little while.   
“Which way am I going?”   
“The wrong way.”   
And just like that he’s beside me, cold and tall and, this is a first, with his hair loose on his shoulders and creeping down his back. I’ve never seen a boy with such long hair. His hood is on most of the time, though, so I can’t really be blamed for not noticing I have the Asian equivalent of Rapunzel on a necklace.  
Steering me in the opposite direction, Equius notices me staring “What?”  
I give a lock of his hair a tug “Never heard of a hair-cut?”  
“I’m a Sikh.”  
Whoops “Shit. Sorry.”  
“Not really,” the corners of his mouth turn up in the slightest smile “I’m actually Muslim.”  
I grunt “Well good for you. Salaam and all that. Where are we going anyway?”  
“The bridge on the river.” like a robot.  
“Where, though?” I press “Which river? Which bridge? How far do we have to go?”  
“Not very far,” he seems to be measuring the distance in his head “It was in another park. Not really a river, more of a large stream.”  
In this city, there are parks everywhere, pockets of green left behind from the forests that stood here from way back when before the land was snatched out of the natives’ hands and razed flat. Since they are from the original American wilderness, they have been frantically protected by the city government and there are only a couple of paths the public can go on. The rest of it belongs to the squirrels and the odd black bear. The park I have been hiding in recently is a puny, artificial thing built around a children’s playground and a botanical garden.   
It makes sense that Equius and Nepeta would be killed in one of the parks. Kanaya is always complaining about the greenway she uses on her walk home, how it’s full of leering homeless men and stoners getting high in the shrubbery. Our parents have warned us to keep out of the parks after dark at all costs. For the most part, I have stayed clear of them.  
Now I’ll have even more reason to do so.  
“You know there’s like fifteen bloody parks and all of them are full of crazies.”  
He nudges my arm with his, almost playfully “And ghosts.”  
Shivering, I tug my jacket closer around me “I should have kept Sol here. If we get charged by bloodthirsty madmen, then I could throw him at them, give us some time to get aw-way. You know what? He nev-ver did giv-ve me back my shirt. Know-wing that w-wanker, he probably lost it in that earthquake he calls a room.”  
For some reason, this strikes Equius as hilarious. He laughs. Like, properly, laughs.  
Bewildered, I punch him on the arm “What’s so funny?”  
“You can work that out for yourself.” he shakes his head in amazement.  
I glare at him “What are you tw-wo plottin’?”  
He holds a hand up in a gesture of surrender “I assure you I want no part of Sollux’s machinations against you. Which is not to say I think there is something wrong with his eventual goal, merely that I- well, it’s simply none of my business.”  
My head spins “W-what the fuck are you talkin’ about?”  
He shakes his head “Never mind.”  
The road stretches into shadows ahead of us. Without the yellow spotlights cast by the streetlights, we would be submerged in the dark. In spite of myself and the ghost beside me, I’m beginning to feel nervous. This is all kinds of stupid. Not just because there are a number of supernatural things that could happen to me with that demon on my tail, but because cities are just not safe at night. Even for boys, and I’ve been mistaken for a girl from behind a couple of times. How stupid would it be if I ended up being assaulted by a bunch of drunken ass-hats with no understanding of the word ‘NO!!!’ while I was evading a demon?  
After about two minutes of silence that is pleasant only for Eq, I can no longer bear it “So! What are you going to do when we see Nepeta next? I read somewhere that ghosts only stick around because of unfinished business, right? So you’ll be pretty much good to go if you can make peace with her. Road-trip to heaven and shit.”  
Eq thinks for a moment before he responds “No.”  
“No?”  
“I can’t leave Gamzee here.”  
As if the demon himself wants to agree, my phone goes off in my pocket. I pretend it hasn’t.  
“So we’ll find a way to get rid of him too. Maybe you and Nepeta can fight him off together? I mean I’ve got no idea how the hell this ghost stuff works, but Sol knows a little bit. We’ll figure it out. Hell, maybe I’ll even ask Rose. This kind of shit is her hobby.”  
He shakes his head “No, you misunderstood. I mean I cannot leave Gamzee behind.”  
I grab him by the arm and turn him to face me “What does that mean?”  
His face remains stubbornly blank “He’s my friend too.”  
“Uh, no, he’s your murderer.”  
“And my friend.”  
It takes a couple of minutes for that to sink in “Is this some kind of religious thing?”  
“No. I…no offense to the wider community, but Islam has lost any context for me after seventeen years stuck in this…purgatory.” he shrugs me off and begins to walk again “I used to think this was a punishment because I was never serious enough to pray five times a day and…” and he shrugs again, as if shaking off something slimy off his jacket “Gamzee isn’t a villain, Eridan. This isn’t…there’s just no black and white here.”  
I bristle “’S’cuse me, but he did possess one of my friends and stab another one. How is that not villainous?”  
“Pardon me for saying this, but you really have no idea what you’re talking about.”   
I can’t remember if I’ve ever heard him sound angry before.  
“It pains me that you were dragged into this simply by my being here and it pains me that people important to you have been killed and injured because of me, but Gamzee is important to me. Don’t think for a moment that I’m not mad at him for killing me. Of course I am! How could I forgive something like that? I had a whole life ahead of me and he took that away from me. I’ve lost the strength to believe in some kind of higher power that will get to decide who should be forgiven for what sin. I’ve lost the strength to forgive him too. I think it’s perfectly within the realms of my rights to be angry about being trapped in the same house for seventeen years, and about being killed and about being robbed of the chance to see my little brother grow up, but there’s nothing I can do about that.  
“All I can do is try to makes sense of this. He was horribly ill, Eridan. He always was. I’m not saying I can’t blame him for what he did. I’m just saying no matter how mad at him I get and no matter what he does, I just can’t believe that he thinks what he is doing is right.”  
We are quiet for a moment. Eq seems faintly horrified to have said so much, and God forbid, to have raised his voice at me, but he makes no move to apologise.   
“You want to forgive him?” I ask.  
“No.”  
It occurs to me that Equius may just be out of practice when it comes to making facial expressions, after seventeen years of little or no interaction.  
“I think you might want to,” I say cautiously “W-w-why else would you want him to…to be freed from whatev-ver this is, unless you wanted to give him a chance to redeem himself?”  
He sighs “What I want is to be alive. I don’t want any of this to have ever happened. I want to wake up in my own bed with my own little brother jumping all over me and realise I’m late for school and forget all about it.”  
I’m about to ask him if he wants to forget about me too when I catch myself. Out of all the stupid things I could possibly say to make him feel worse or more resentful of me that would have to be way up there. Instead, I loop my arm through his, not caring how weird it would look if there were anyone around to see it or if it seems to him like I’m making a move on him.  
“I’m not saying I think it’s a good idea to let Gamzee off the hook the way you want to. I’m not saying I think it’s possible. I’m not saying I have the foggiest idea of how any of this works, if it’s even possible to de, uh, de-demon him, but if you want to try it…then ok. We’ll try to help Gamzee and Nepeta.”  
The phone rings again, filling a brief silence. Eq nods quietly. He lets me hang onto him as the streets melt under our feet and the starts start to come out and the smudged shape of the park drifts out of the night. My breath steams in the air and my footsteps echo, each one disastrously loud in the quiet of the suburbs at night. It has just gone past nine o’clock, and yet the cars that pass us (me) are far and few between. Most of the houses we pass are dark and sleeping.   
“My curfew is ten o’clock on a school night.” I say unexpectedly “I guess I can’t exactly call Pa to tell him I’ll be out until then, but he should be cool with it…I think he thinks me and Sol were doing stuff.”  
For some reason, Equius can’t look at me “Oh yes? I’m sure you can convince him of your purity somehow.”  
“Was that a fuckin’ joke?” I’m definitely not in the mood to laugh.  
He assures me it was not with a small smile.  
Then I notice how close we are to the mouth of the forest. If he it was possible to physically injure the projection of his body, then I would probably snap his arm from how quickly I tighten my grip on him. I jam my hand deep into the empty pocket and grip Eq’s arm with the other so hard my knuckles turn white. Don’t ask me where that sudden wave of unease has come from- I haven’t felt a thing like it since I was with the demon on the rooftop.  
“This is really where you died?” I whisper.  
“Not on the sidewalk.”  
“Oh for-” I punch him in the arm “Bastard. How far in is the stream? River? Whatever?”  
“I can hear it.”  
I strain for the rush of water and hear it in the distance, so quiet it is drowned out every time a breeze rustles through the trees.   
Equius takes a step forward. I follow him hesitantly, more because I am firmly attached to him than because I want to. The trees stretch over our head like the roof of a cave. The road crunches under my feet like dry bones (his bones are still in the backpack under my bed, but weirdly, I kind of wish I had them with me right now). The smell of the night and pine sap is carried on the breeze, along with some coppery, meaty scent which could be real or imagined.  
At this moment I would give anything to be invisible like Equius; to make no sound as I walk and release no steam into the air when I breathe.  
The rushing of water grows louder, but it is still little more than a whisper underneath the roar of blood in my ears.  
Noting (and probably hearing) my discomfort, Equius quickens his pace a little “Have you ever heard of a teenaged boy being attacked in a park while he walks with a ghost?”  
“Uh…no.”  
“Then let’s assume that kind of thing never happens.”  
This time I do laugh, if nervously “Y’know for someone returnin’ to the place they were killed, you sure are cheerful.”  
“Yes. I am.”  
“If I’m supposed to infer something deep and meanin’ful about you from that…I’m just stumped, it ain’t workin’.”  
Equius steers me down a narrow path that seems to contract around us “There was no subtext to that. I’m just pleased to be outside.”  
“Hey how come you weren’t weeping with joy the first time you got outta the house?”  
“Because I ended up in a dirty boy’s bathroom.”  
A twig snaps in the distance. Swearing, I freeze in my tracks and search for the source of the noise. Eq tugs me along gently. My heart beats so wildly it feels as if it’s trying to get out of my chest.   
“What’s wrong?” he asks.  
“One of us has to be terrified.” I hiss through gritted teeth “Might as w-w-well be me.”  
He points ahead of us “There it is.”  
Ghosts must have good night vision, because whatever he’s pointing at just looks like more dark to me. The only light is a weak supply from the moon. I’m relying on Eq’s senses to get us where we’re going and trying not to put my feet in anymore dog corpses tonight.  
But as we draw closer to it, there is a break in the trees and the canopy of leaves that blocked the moon out is gone. I can see the silhouette of a bridge curving over a wide and shallow stretch of water. Standing on the bank of the river, I can see the bridge is not all that impressive in length or design.   
It doesn’t look like a place where two people would be stolen out of the world. For that matter, it doesn’t look like anything.  
“How…how did her body go missing?” I rasp “The water’s barely a foot deep.”  
Someone else jumps in before Equius can reply.  
“He cut me up. Put me in some bags.”  
I don’t need to see her to know it’s Nepeta. I recognise the voice from the pool and the dream that preceded that encounter.  
She sits on the floor of the bridge in the exact middle. Gone is the odd white dress, replaced by a trenchcoat that is massive on her petite frame, a plain black T-shirt and baggy jeans cut open at the knees. A green beanie is jammed over masses of curly hair. Like Equius, there is no visible sign of her death. If I were to pass her on the street I wouldn’t think anything of it, except I might turn around for a second glance- she is unbearably cute.  
Maybe I’m imagining this, maybe I’m not, but to me she resembles Feferi just the tiniest bit.  
Equius reacts with surprising calm for a guy meeting his best friend after seventeen years of limbo “I thought you would be here.”  
“I didn’t,” you’d think the shock would knock the voice out of me, but no, apparently I still have the strength to mutter.  
She doesn’t reply.  
Her face isn’t quite right. It reminds me in a weird way of some kind of jack-o’-lantern: there is a candle placed in the hollow center to give the impression of life and energy, but you still know it’s only a face carved into a pumpkin. Even Equius is uneasy. He draws moves to draw me closer to him, although I’ve stayed glued to his side since we entered the park.  
“I would have come sooner.” he says uncertainly.  
“Why didn’t you?” her voice is not quite a voice either.   
Something about it, the realness of it, has become dusty and dull after years without speaking.  
Both Eq and I flinch as the phone rings from my pocket. I consider answering it for a moment- the demon might have something to say this time, since we’re face-to-face with his other victim. Then logic and reality kick in hard and I ignore the ringing.  
“I wasn’t strong enough.” he says flatly “And I didn’t want to.”  
Her voice remains a monotone “Didn’t want to see me?”  
“I did, but not the way you are right now.”  
“Not all of us had a house to hide in.” she opens her hands which were folded in her lap, and shows us a rodent-like skull “You…you…you…you…” this continues for a couple of seconds like a CD skipping.  
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and just as the phone has stopped ringing it starts up again with barely a second’s pause. Equius squeezes my arm and manoeuvres me so that I am behind him, still clinging.   
So brave.  
Finally, Nepeta gets herself under control “You had it fine. I had to stay here, with my bones. He buried me in five places. Too deep to find. No one wanted to dig me up.” she reaches into her trenchcoat and extracts a large, canine skull “And I was still hungry. Were you hungry?”  
Even though there is so little variation in her tone, Equius knows to answer “No. I wasn’t thirsty or hungry once.”  
“I was. All the time. I ate and drank a lot.” she stashes the dog’s skull (not Ahab, I think, Ahab is buried safely in the backyard) “No one ever sees me. No animals or people, but they all know I’m here.”  
I have never heard any kind of urban legend coming out of this particular park, aside from the standard stuff about hobo fight clubs and escaped serial killers. Then again, if I met this girl hunched in my path with the skulls of small animals rattling in her deep pockets, I would never breathe a word of it for fear of being committed.  
“Where are your bones?” he asks.  
She nods behind her “Some of me is over there. Some of me is over there. Some of me is over there.” she repeats this twice more, gesturing in a new direction each time.  
Her eyes are like marbles, and as they slide over me in a passing glance, I can’t help but shrink into Equius’s back. The terror I felt earlier has been replaced with something much more potent, but that I can’t really name.  
“We can’t take her back with us.” I whisper “She’s…she’s not right.”  
“I know.”  
And that fucking phone still has not stopped. I’m about ready to whip it out of my pocket and smash it on the floor.  
“Nepeta, listen to me.” says Equius “I know this whole thing is terrible beyond words. I know you hate Gamzee for what he -”  
“I don’t.” she breaks in, troubled for the first time “I don’t hate Gamzee. Why would I?”  
Equius actually scoffs “Uh, because he killed us?”  
She shrugs “He killed us. Somebody else left us here. That’s who I hate. The person who left us here.” she pauses, contemplative “Do you know who left us here?”  
“I can ask someone who might know-” he starts.  
“Good. I’ll kill them.” she says it as casually as if she has suggested we order a pizza.  
My mind, however, is on other things apart from the theoretical existence of some kind of god “Who the hell is this person that keeps telling you this stuff? I want to meet them soon. I need to have some questions answered in this century, please.”  
“At this point it’s not about where we cast the blame for what has happened to us, alright? I want to go. There isn’t anything left for us here.”  
“I mean it. You’re telling me later.”  
“For goodness’s sake Eridan, one emergency at a time.” he hisses, than addresses Nepeta again “Don’t you want to move on?”  
She seems confused by the question “Move on? To the people who left us here? But they don’t want us.”  
“We don’t know that there are any ‘people’, Nepeta-”  
“I know there are. I know they don’t want us where they are.”  
My head has begun to ache. This is literally the scariest and most bewildering moment of my life: a half-crazy ghost girl plays with skulls while she denounces whatever God there may be and another totally solid other ghost, whom I am using as a shield, argues that whatever that God may have is most likely better than being stuck here. For the first time since Pa’s relapse, I actually want to pray.  
Nepeta tilts her head to the side “And what if I’m just crazy? What if there are no people? What if this is the only place we exist and leaving here means we just stop being? I don’t want to die twice.”  
“How is it that we always end up hip-deep in a fundamentally stupid argument?” groans Equius “I get it that you’re disillusioned when it comes to the idea of some creator or an afterlife, but do you really want to stay here as an invisible, trans-dimensional drifter? You say no one can see you anyway, so what is the point of trying to exist like this? You look insane.”  
“So do you.”  
The ringing of the phone is just taunting now. There is always a chance that it could be Pa asking me if I plan to come back home tonight, considering it’s almost 10 o’clock now, but I’m not brave enough to investigate.  
I clear my throat.  
Both of them stop in mid-sentence and look at me.  
“Equius wants to leave. He would probably be gone by now if it weren’t for you – and Gamzee. I don’t think it’s that you were abandoned here by…by whatever’s up there, I think it’s that you were murdered. That’s not a nice way to go.” I give her a pointed glare “I don’t think you really want to spend the rest of eternity squatting on a bridge playing with rodent skulls, do you? I mean even the slimmest chance that there’s something better than this is worth a shot, right?”  
“What would you know about it?” her lip curls “You’re not dead.”  
“Nah, but my Pa is. He’s got cancer. I mean, he’s not dead right now, but he’s carrying around something in him that will kill him eventually. I know people survive cancer all the time…and I also know he’s not gonna be one of those people.” I pause to swallow the lump in my throat “It’s really hard to think there’s someone upstairs when shit like that happens to your family, or to you. Maybe it isn’t a ‘someone’, like a single god, not any kind of god a religion would describe…but after seeing Equius and you and Gamzee, I just can’t believe there isn’t at least a system. Maybe you guys fell through the cracks. Maybe this is how the system works.”  
She blinks “System?”  
I shrug “The hell if I know. I’m just hoping I don’t get sent to hell for liking guys when I die, ok? Also, why were you following me around? How did you do that if you can’t leave your bones?”  
Her face twitches like there is a hook planted in her cheek and someone off to the side is attempting to reel her in. And she is gone. No flash, no roll of thunder, no freezing breeze. Just gone at the speed of a blink.  
“Shit.” says Equius.  
The phone rings loudly.  
I can’t help but sigh in relief “Do you think she w-w-w-w-w…bounced back to the pool?”  
Equius’s shoulders slump “I don’t know.”  
“But…” I start, meaning to say, how could she get to the pool if her bones were all here in the park?  
How did Gamzee cut her to pieces and bury her in five separate locations without being noticed or leaving any kind of evidence, especially with one of the alleged burial spots being just at the end of the bridge where they were killed?   
Did the police know where Equius and Nepeta were killed, or did they just search the whole park only knowing that they had disappeared into here? If this was going on just as we moved into the house, then Equius would have still been fresh enough to put out the same kind of nasty meat odour that rolled off Nepeta, so how did Pa not notice the smell of corpse in his new house? What did Gamzee do with Equius’s body while he was taking care of Nepeta? If they were killed in the middle of the day, how did he do his grisly work without interruption, and how did he transport not only Equius back to his house, but the tools for the murder which his father would have noticed missing and suspected Gamzee, given his history with mental illness and the fact that the victims were both close friends of his? Does his father know? Is he still alive? Is Equius’s father or brother still alive, and how come Equius doesn’t want to find out?  
I could probably answer this stuff with a quick Google search. I should have done that in the first place- collected the facts of the murders before I got involved with the victims of said murders.  
In fact, that’s exactly what I’ll do when I get home since sleep is entirely out of the question now.  
“Could you possibly do something about that bloody phone?” asks Equius through gritted teeth.  
“You mean...”   
Oh fuck it.  
Dis-entangling the phone from the hat it is wrapped in, I unlock the screen and am surprised to see the caller has a familiar ID this time.  
“Pa?”  
There is no answer.  
Concerned, Equius leans in so he can hear it too.  
There is only the sound of laboured, pained breathing coming from my father’s end of the connection.


	26. All that remains of my family

“This week fucking sucks.”  
Dave finds me in the waiting room. Some of what little colour he had in him before has returned to his cheeks and his wrist is no longer bandaged, although he is wearing long sleeves.   
I look up at him. It takes a couple of bleary blinks to confirm this is in fact Dave, not a vivid hallucination. He gestures to the chair beside me. I nod and he sits down. He throws an arm around my shoulder and pulls me into a hug. Dave will only ever hug you if something terrible has happened, so he must know.  
“Does.” I mutter into his shoulder “Really fuckin’ does.”  
“One of the nurses told me you were here. He said one of my friends was in the waiting room for Intensive Care, waiting on his parent, so he let me come over for moral support.”  
He rolls up his sleeve and shows me a faint, but livid streak of red on his wrist. The scar seems pretty light considering how deep the wound was.  
He laughs, seeing my questioning glance “Search me. I’m no doctor, but this thing is healing a whole lot faster than any other cut I’ve ever had.”  
“Last year…you tripped into a thorn bush, right? Those cuts took weeks to clear up.”  
Dave shrugs “Maybe somebody upstairs likes me.”  
“They must hate me, then.”  
Dave has no way of knowing, but there was actually someone in his chair when he sat down. He moved to the next one over without comment and continued to wait in silence, as still and expressive as a stone statue. His expression is carved blank. He doesn’t react to anything. He hasn’t made a move to comfort me since we arrived at the ER, riding in the ambulance with Pa. The paramedics would shiver every time they passed through him and there were a couple requests to shut the windows, but apart from that, Equius has gone unnoticed.  
“What happened?” asks Dave cautiously.  
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I take my glasses off and fix my eyes on the ground “Just… I don’t know. I was out walking and Pa called me. All I could hear was heavy breathing, so I thought it was (a demon) a butt-dial or something. I hung up, but he called me again and all I could hear was him breathing. Then he finally said my name, so I knew something was wrong. I ran all the way home (three miles) and when I found him, he was at the bottom of the stairs.”  
“Shit.” says Dave simply.  
“He fell, I guess.”  
“Was he-”  
“Bleeding? Not much. I think he’s doing most of his bleeding on the inside.”  
Dave’s face is grim “What are you going to do?”  
I glance towards the doors my father is behind “Wait. I’ll wait until they have something good to tell me, then I’m going home.”  
“Cronus?”  
I shake my head “He’s in the middle of some serious tests right now. He’ll be finished by tomorrow-w, but until then I don’t w-want to distract him.”  
Checking his watch, Dave points out to me that it is already tomorrow “So there’s no one at home.”  
My eyes flick involuntarily towards Equius “No. Nobody.”  
Dave sighs through his nose “Alright. We’ll see what we can do about that. Give me your phone.”  
I hand it over, wanting to tell him there is a possibility that a demon will interfere with his call. He must be calling Karkat, because he is the only one out of our friends who would be awake at 1 a.m. on a Monday morning. He doesn’t ask why I haven’t called to tell anyone that I’m in Intensive Care. Dave doesn’t tend to ask about that kind of stuff.  
Good thing too, because I’m not sure what excuse I would use.  
I hear Karkat bark into the phone. Dave holds it at a distance until Karkat has finished ranting at me for calling him in the middle of the morning.  
Something like “…my business what your problems are this fucking early in the day Eridan Ampora, go the hell away, I need sleep…”  
It almost makes me want to smile, it is such a familiar thing to hear, even though I haven’t called Karkat in the middle of the night once this past year.  
“Karkat,” says Dave softly “It’s me. Listen up for a second, ok? Eridan’s had some trouble.”  
“What kind of STD?” Karkat’s inside voice needs some work.  
“This is serious, you douche! Mr Ampora is in Intensive Care.”  
I look away and ignore the rest of their conversation.  
It was a mistake to leave Pa alone. I knew he would get attacked and yet I skipped merrily on my way because I was too scared to do otherwise. The backpack is at my feet, pushed under the chair for safe-keeping. It only occurred to me to bring the bag when the ambulance had pulled up in the drive. I made an excuse, saying I needed to pick up some medicine for what was going to be an over-night stay in the waiting room, and checked the contents weren’t damaged.  
The bundle of bones was still unmarked. They had been completely ignored. The demon came into my house solely for the purpose of hurting my father. The sceptic in me wonders why he flayed my dog, but only broke a couple (I hope) of my father’s bones. Perhaps he has left Pa alive to remind me he can change the situation at any moment? Not that I really know the guy, but it seems like something he would do.  
He is testing the waters, I think. Seeing how far he can push me, how hard until I can’t spring back anymore. Seeing if I have any way to fight back – and I don’t.  
But I’m sure as fuck not going to let this slide. He’s going to be surprised by just how hard I can bounce back when I find a way to fight him.   
“Karkat wants to know if you want him to come over.” says Dave.  
If I weren’t so numb on the inside, I might be touched by Karkat’s willingness to extricate himself from the Internet for me, traverse half the city and blag his way into Intensive Care just for me.  
“Nah.” I say flatly “I’ve got it covered.”  
“He says he doesn’t want you harassing the staff.” says Dave “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Why don’t you let the others know? Ok, fine, don’t wake John and Jade up, but Rose or Kanaya, maybe Sollux.”  
Dave covers holds the phone away from himself again “So this is pretty much out of your hands, but would you rather have Kanaya or Rose stay with you?”  
“Stay with me?” I repeat.  
The world outside Intensive Care has kind of blinked out of existence. Realising I am still THAT Eridan Ampora with THOSE friends hits me like a bucket of cold water, and it’s kind of refreshing.  
“You’re getting a sleep-over whether you like it or not. I can’t stop them. You can’t stop them. I know you like being all aloof and quietly needy and all that flighty shit, but it’s time to stop running and just…let the love catch up?” Dave stop mid-tangent, shaking his head “’Scuse me, that was disgraceful. I’m totally out of practice. I’ve seen you guys like twice this week and I can’t pull that rant-y shit on Bro now or he starts to talk about brain damage. Bottom line: don’t try to wriggle out of this one. You’re getting some goddamned comfort and affection. We’re escorting you through this shit, buddy, we are here for you.”  
“Shut up Dave!” Karkat’s shriek makes the speakers crackle “Jesus H Christ and Merciful Allah! Eridan doesn’t need gnashing his ear off with your pedantic shit!”  
The secretary glances up at us in mild alarm. Colouring, I take the phone from Dave.  
“Stuff off, Karkat, I’m alright. Same can’t be said for my dad, alright, but I’m alive and not emotionally crippled.”  
Karkat starts to mutter “Just downright irresponsible. The man survives two rounds with breast cancer and he lets a simple staircase pull one over on him.”  
“That’s not at all ok to say.” I remind him gently “It’s your job to be sympathetic, not offended by my father’s lack of care. That’s my job.”  
“Don’t come to school tomorrow.” orders Karkat “We’ll take care of the oh-so-essential shit like your notes and all that. Dave will call in with his Mr Ampora impression (a shockingly good one) and say you’re sick.”  
“Or I could just tell the school he’s been in an accident.”   
Karkat is silent for a moment “Oh yeah.”  
It’s one of Karkat’s most firm beliefs that knowledge of one’s suffering should be strictly limited to the immediate family and best friends. Once, he refused to complain of a pain that proved to be an inflamed appendix and nearly died. I used to wish I could be so stern and unforgiving with myself, so principled in my suffering, up until the appendix event when I realised Karkat I basically terrified to admit he might be defective in any other way aside from being an albino. Dave happens to be able to deal with whatever confidence issues this condition brings by cracking jokes about how fetishized his ‘people’ are and hides his red eyes from the world with a pair of ‘ironic’ shades.  
I’m not sure what kind of problems this ghost thing is going to leave me with assuming I do manage to survive it, but I have noticed that I wear that stripy fashion crime Cronus sent me a lot more often. Safety blanket.  
It came with me to Intensive Care.   
“I’m gonna arrange it so Kanaya can stay with you tomorrow, ok? She’ll go home with you.”  
“Can I have Rose?” I blurt “It’s just that Kanaya’s kinda busy with a sewing project right now, isn’t she?”  
Reacting for the first time, Equius casts me a questioning glance. Out of all of our friends, Rose is the one who has the most chance of uncovering the weird stuff. Dave may have been outright possessed, but like Jade, every time I try to tug a hint out of him that he in some way remembers what has happened to him, he just starts to talk about how they’re sending him to victim support and Jade is gonna have to do a stint in a psychiatric hospital for at least half a year and how John is determined to take her courses for her so she can hop right into the university system the moment they let her out.  
The stuff I don’t think about.  
I want to be able to think about that stuff again. I just want this to be over.  
“Eridan Ampora?”  
I push the phone back at Dave and stand up “Yes?”  
The white-coated woman who has just come through the doors gives me a very tired smile “We’re all finished up with your father now. It will be a while before he’s ready to receive any visitors, I’m afraid.”  
My heart jumps into my throat “What’ wrong with him?”  
She approaches me, slapping on her bed-side manner face so fast it makes me nauseous “Nothing we haven’t been able to fix. He’ll need to be here for a little while to recover, but you should be able to bring him home in a matter of days.” it strikes me how that expression, which is meant to be comforting, looks like Equius’s blank face.  
“Can I see him?” I ask, hating myself for the tears that are welling up in the corners of my eye.  
She nods “He isn’t awake.”  
“I’ll wait out here.” Dave offers me a grim smile “I’ll get Karkat to come and pick you up.”  
Equius doesn’t move. He stares at the ground close to my feet. I fight back the urge to shout at him, drag him in with me by the collar, clench my jaw and follow the woman.  
The woman gives me a sceptical glance as she lets me through the doors, but I’m too jittery to care. What if he’s lost a limb or something? Obviously they would have given me a list of his various ailments and an estimate of the expenses if I were older, but in their eyes I’m just a distraught child.  
She guides me past several rooms with heavy doors and big windows so families can see their people without entering the room.   
The patients barely look like people, so buried in machinery and covered with wires dug into their skin that they are more like cyborgs. When I was younger and I would sit with Pa through his chemotherapy, sitting at his feet while Cronus filled the empty air with idle chatter, and thought about how Pa might instead be the battery for the machines they hooked him up to, fancying I could see them sucking away his vitality and his colour.  
“How old are you, Eridan?” asks the woman gently “Is there someone who can stay with you while your father recovers?”  
“He has cancer,” I say.  
She blinks “Yes, we have his medical records.”  
“Will this make him worse?”   
She shakes her head “Of course we’ll check up on his condition, but they are totally unrelated-”  
The rooms blur by “We have the most rotten luck in this family about our health. My brother broke his arm twice and a leg too when he was younger.” I’m babbling, but I don’t care “No, there’s no one at home.”  
“What about your brother?”  
Why do these hospital corridors always stretch themselves out for miles? Endless sterile white and halogen strips, like the fucking mouth of hell “He’s…he’s doing some really important tests at his university right now, like half-way across the state. I haven’t told him yet. I didn’t want to distract him. Anyw-way, I’m eighteen in two days.”  
Her expression slips a little bit- just the slightest hint of shock and pity. I know doctors well. Getting emotionally attached to patients is dangerous and difficult, so they do their best to imagine people like Pa as nothing but heaps of flesh needing fixing. Still, in the hospital where Pa was treated twice, the nurses and the administration staff recognised me and Cronus and would ask us how school was going.  
(Great, it’s really motivates me to study when I think about how I might end up an orphan- can’t have under-educated orphans!)  
This isn’t that hospital, thank God.   
“Eighteen in two days?” she repeats.  
She stops outside the door, preparing to say more, but I’m not going to wait for her. I push the door open and see the very familiar sight of my father reclined in a hospital bed. The sheets are over-white and his clothes look like they were cut from somebody’s best linen. He only has one IV drip inserted into his wrist and a couple of bandages on the insides of his arms a large bandage on his forehead, but I’m so used to seeing the other machine him that for a moment they really are there: monitoring the heart-rate and powering lungs, pumping in artificial poisons in hopes of chasing out the ones nature put into him…  
“I’m afraid we won’t be able to discharge him by your…your birthday, Eridan, but…” the woman is saying.  
I pull up a chair to my father’s bedside and take the hand that isn’t bandaged very gently. It’s so practiced I don’t even think about doing it. One second I’m in the doorway, the next I’ve assumed the position of grieving relative at his bedside. Muscle memory, they call it.  
“Hi.” I say “You look like shit.”  
Talking to my unconscious father is an old habit. There were days he was so goddamned sick he didn’t even have the energy to smile at me or Cronus, when the only thing either of us could think to do was just talk until our throats went dry. One of us on either side of him, sounding like we were reading a play to him.  
“Mind you, no one can look like shit quite so elegantly as you.” I turn his hand over in mine; examining it for scratches from his fall “You do it like a model. Or like an unconscious action hero. It’s kind of a relief to see you zonked out because of anaesthesia for once, instead of bein’ like, fuckin’ crushed under the cancer and stuff.”  
The woman lingers anxiously in the doorway, checking her watch.  
“So I haven’t told Cro about your spill yet, since he’s right in the middle of a bunch of…fuckin’ internship I think, or a big test, I don’t know. I’ll tell him tonight, then we can decide if w-w-we w-want him rushin’ home. Between you an’ me I think the last thin’ we need is Mr Chatty pollutin’ the air. Considerin’ the material you were given, you did pretty good raisin’ Cro, but the boy just can’t appreciate a good silence.”  
I’m glad Dave didn’t come with me, or Equius, not when I’m sat here chatting like a loon to a man clearly stoned into a deep sleep on general anaesthesia.  
I turn to the woman “Sorry, but could you giv-ve us a minute?”  
If there’s one thing the hospital visits have taught me, it’s that no nurse can refuse a teary-eyed kid with a stutter asking to talk to his sick dad in private. And out she goes.  
I draw my chair up close to him “Listen…it’s sort of my fault that you’re here. Not all my fault, but I shouldn’t’a left you at home alone. I was too scared to go back. I told myself that there w-was nothin’ I could do ev-ven if I was at home, and I was like…so scared I ev-ven thought about kippin’ on a park bench. I woulda been safe, actually, I have a ghost with me. He can grab people sometimes. If someone were tryin’ta mess w-with me, I think he w-would protect me.”  
I show him the bone necklace “He was buried in our wall, Pa. in our basement wall. He liv-ves with us. He’s been here since we mov-ved in. His name is Equius and I think he’s Iranian or something, but…but he was shot by his best friend with a crossbow then shoved into the wall. This guy was seriously mentally ill. Dunno how they didn’t spot the busted up wall or the corpse inside it when w-we mov-ved in, but I guess it’s a bit like the cat corpse stuck up the chimney, you know? Just one of those weird things that gets by the mov-vers. Anyway, his friend murdered him so I’m tryin’ to help him get to the other side. Apparently there’s somebody in charge after all. He must really hate our family, don’t you think? I’ll bet you sold your soul to the Devil or something.”  
“The guy that murdered him…they’re callin’ him a demon, and he’s playin’ with me. He’s bored of bein’ invisible, I guess, and somehow he linked up to the rest of the world through me. So he’s goin’ around hurtin’ people I lov-ve and I’m…yeah. I’m tryin’ to stop him. He killed Ahab, but don’t worry. I buried her close.”  
Tears spill down my cheeks. Hastily, I wipe them up with my free hand.  
“I’m gonna fix this.”  
I feel a cold hand on my shoulder.  
“He’s been very good to me,” adds Equius with a soft smile at me “And he has helped me much more than I have a right to expect from him.”  
Sighing, I put my ear to my father’s chest and hear the rumble of his pulse, still going on stubbornly. He’s going to be fine. Confused, pissed off and very suspicious of the stairs, but fine.  
“We’re telling Rose about you today.” I say.  
Equius nods “About damned time we told someone.”


	27. All that remains of the calm before the storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness of this chapter. Just started a new school and a really intensive course. IB anyone?

There are those weird moments in life where you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. When I say stuck, I mean each presses so hard on either side there is a distinct possibility of your innards being squeezed out of you in the same way that a tube of toothpaste will ooze, and your movement is so totally restricted you wonder if someone covered your back and front in super-glue to remove any chance of escape. Still, a strange sort of comfort can be found in these moments if they are the right kind of rocks and hard places.  
During Pa’s first couple rounds with chemo, I realised a number of things.  
One, I was helpless to help him. Two, no kind of magic existed on the earth that was going to make him better like enchanted fruit and blessing from ethereal creatures would in the fairy tales. Three, I wasn’t going to find strength in God like so many suggested I should, so it was easier to forget that such a concept existed entirely except to curse Him light-heartedly (or bitterly) every now and then. This series of epiphanies came to me on a hot afternoon when I was about thirteen, waiting at home with a teen-aged brother (supposedly mature enough to look after me while our father was poisoned in the hospital, but I had my doubts) for Pa to call us with an all-clear. It was beautiful, the reality of how truly helpless we are sometimes.  
I felt the weight of a world of responsibility fall off my shoulders at the thought that I wouldn’t have to beseech a deaf God in prayer or wish upon the first star every night, that I could stop hating myself for being healthy. I couldn’t help him. I could only wait and trust him to get better. So I stripped down to my boxers, opened a window for a breeze and settled in for a marathon of every action/horror movie Pa had forbidden me from watching that I could find. Cronus made popcorn, happy to have me figuring things out in the only limited, adolescent way I could.  
How I wish it was that kind of rock or that kind of hard place.  
But no, no matter how much I want to pretend I’m free to stay stuck here until someone else sorts themselves out and the pressure is off, the responsibility is mine to take this time. If I want to get out from between these demons and this ghost, then I’ve got some serious wriggling to do.

Rose must have expected me to wait for her to make the call to Cronus, because when she walks into the living room (having entered the house with a spare key I forgot she even had) and sees me talking reasonably into the phone, she does a slight double-take.  
I wave to her.  
“I’m not sure you should go into school tomorrow either,” Cronus is saying “Firstly, Pa will want to have one of us with him even if he says he doesn’t, and I reckon you could use a breather from school after that kind of shit.”  
Initially, there was a good bit of babbling which would have been tearful if Karkat hadn’t been watching me like a hawk. Cronus did manage to glean the basic nature of the issue and only berated me when he discovered my reason for not calling him after the ambulance came. We’ve been talking for the better part of two hours, well into the early morning. It’s about five o’clock in the morning and Karkat has been unconscious on the couch since he figured I wasn’t going to dissolve without someone physically holding my hand. Equius disappeared upstairs. The back pack is shoved under the couch, so I don’t know what he’s doing up there and neither do I have the energy to be concerned.  
“Pa didn’t let us miss school when his cancer was being a bitch. What makes you think that’s gonna change?” I point out.  
“Pa didn’t let us miss school then because we woulda missed like three years, chief. Also he wanted to give us as much of an illusion of a normal, healthy life and dad as he could. You know he was passed out exhausted for like half of the time we were out of the house.”  
In my mind’s eye, I see Cronus in his pyjamas, prostrate under his bed where he has always taken all of his personal call for reasons that seem ridiculous to me, but are probably deep and personal to him. He twirls a lock of his thick and fluffy hair around a forefinger, needing something in his hands to fidget with the absence of a cigarette. His roommate will be complaining about the noise, wondering why his loony roommate with the brogue he can switch on like a light is muttering under his bed and five in the morning.  
“Yeah, yeah. I’m not the innocent little flower I used to be Cro, I know-w shit now-w.”  
“It’s your birthday tomorrow.” he says “Do go in then, yeah? Either that or convince Pa to let you stay the day with him. I don’t want you to be on your own.”  
I snort, glancing at Rose and Karkat and at the backpack strap sticking out from under the couch “Believ-ve you me, I couldn’t be alone if I wanted to.”  
Rose settles on the couch and eases Karkat’s head into her lap. She takes a couple strands of white hair and threads them into the beginnings of a small braid at his temple.  
I have been jumping from chair to chair to windowsill to chair again, but now I pick a cushy armchair facing the TV and decide to stay there, if only for Rose’s sake.  
“Get John to make you one of those amazing cakes.” I can hear Cronus grinning “Get fat. I mean stuffed, yeah? So I can’t tell your flab from the couch.”  
“I’m back in swimming.” I roll my eyes “Fat is a luxury I cannot afford.”  
“It’s called coping with food. Will I fly down this weekend?” like most of the Irish, he’s just phrasing his decision as a question “We’ll both get good and fat. Fat as sultans, then we’ll amass a harem…actually, what’s the male version of that? Man-harem? Manrem? Whatever it is, I want one.”  
“Oi. Mind your rainbow demons.”  
Rose gives me a strange look while Cronus laughs.  
I hear a voice reproaching him softly in the background, and him saying “Chill out Pony, it was a dainty little giggle and the exams are over anyway. You should be celebrating.”  
Briefly, I wonder why I have caught Cronus in his room at all. Normally after finishing a batch of tests or papers Cronus grabs his ‘wingmen’, that being his roommate nicknamed Pony after his chosen hairstyle, Kanaya’s sister Porrim whose life-mission seems to be to dress in as little clothing as legally possible, attract the men like flies and then swat them down and some girl I’ve never met before named Meulin. There used to be two more in that group, but Tuna made a choice about the way his life was going and after that Kankri couldn’t bear to carry on with the rest of them while there was a big hole gaping in their group.  
So of course I feel honour-bound to tell Cronus this next thing “You do know Kankri’s home right now?”  
He is silent for a moment “Point bein’? You know I share a university with the guy. It’s not like seein’ him burns me like a vampire in sunlight, chief, it’s all good. Make up my bed for me, yeah?”  
“Yeah.”  
“I gotta go do my rounds now, make sure the others got home alright. I tell you, if I don’t look out for these bitches they end up in the weirdest places. When I get home, I’ll tell you about the time we found Meu dead drunk up a tree.” he takes a deep breath then sighs heavily “Ok… give my love to the old man. I’m gonna try to be home by…shall we say…Sunday? See if you can borrow one of the albino’s cars to get me, ok? Love you too, by the way. Be good Eri.”  
He hangs up before I have the chance to say goodbye. Point of contention: we both need to have the last word in conversations, be they debates, arguments, discussions of our father’s yo-yo health or just saying goodbye on the way into school back when we shared a campus.  
“I take it things went well?” says Rose cautiously.  
She finished the first braid some time ago, put several more in and is now in the process of winding up all of those braids into one big snake of a plait.  
I put the landline down on the coffee table “Yeah. Had a bit of a panic, a nice cry and a good brotherly bonding moment there.”  
“So when can we expect the prodigal Ampora home?”  
For the life of me, I’ll never understand why they call him that “Sunday, he says. I guess he’s gotta let work now he’ll be taking some time off and arrange some stuff with his professors. He just finished a shit-load of tests, so it’s not like they need him there or anything.”  
“How long can we expect him to stay?” typical of Rose to ask the questions the rest of us forget about.  
“Dunno. ‘til Pa kicks his ass back to the uni I guess.”  
“Are you aware of how thick your accent becomes after you get off the phone with him?”  
“Wazat?” Karkat bats Rose’s hands away “G’off…g’way…what time is it?”  
His eyes go wide as he checks his watch. Sitting up, he rubs the sleep from his eyes and runs into the hall to retrieve his shoes.  
“Shit! I’m so fucking shitting late! Why didn’t you guys tell me I was late?! I promised I’d drive the asshat to the cemetery this morning!”  
As it always does at the allusion towards or mention of Mituna, my heart skips a beat and shiver runs up my spine. Sol’s family are Buddhist by virtue of being Japanese, but they follow the teachings just enough that they had Mituna’s body cremated. Some of his ashes were scattered and some of them were interred under a gravestone to visit.  
Rose crosses her legs and straightens her blouse, somehow making the gesture mature and professional even with the three-eyed cat motif “And how is Kankri’s journey of acceptance and discovery coming along?”  
Karkat hops by the door-way as he struggles into his shoes, making for the kitchen “Is that what he’s doing? I don’t fucking know, he just mopes around the house and argues with Dad about teleology and tells me to brush my hair (Rose and I snort). I wish he’d done the considerate thing like falling off a mountain or getting a limb munched by a shark. That’s how real men and women and whatevers discover their true selves. Or like, road-trip across the country with a dude who speaks only Spanish or something to cope with loss,” his mouth is full now “I just want him to get the fuck off my couch and outta my fridge. He doesn’t respect the labels on the left-overs and then he expects me to listen to one of his lectures on why I can’t call dibs because the biryani is a shared resource and not want to put my foot up his ass.”  
Karkat passes us again. He has a slice of bread in his mouth and an apple in his hand.  
He gives me a serious look “You guys better keep me updated. If something bad happens, drag me right the fuck outta school. Don’t even worry about Dave. Sol can babysit Dave.” he jabs a finger in my direction “Seriously Ampora, I will put you in the room next door to your dad if you don’t keep me updated.”  
The front door slams an instant later.  
“Dave’s going back to school today?” I ask.  
Rose nods “While it is unfortunate that we can’t be there to welcome him back, I wouldn’t worry about Dave.”  
I shrug “He’s a Strider. He can handle it.”  
This is gonna happen in a rush, or it won’t happen at all.  
So I take a deep breath, stealing myself, and cross the room. Rose cocks and eyebrow when I tug the backpack out from under the couch. Her face turns the colour of the contents of the pack as I open it carefully and show them too her. At first, she has some complaints to voice, and she does so strongly. But as I begin to explain, she quiets. She listens, pale and aghast, not sure yet if she’s going to believe me.  
I show her the hole in the wall I concealed what seems like years ago and I describe the attacks, the dream, our first meeting, the pool and the bridge. Still, I don’t think she really believes a word of it until Equius appears at the top of the stairs, his hair around his shoulders again, yawning as if he could really be tired, and tugging at the collar of the hoodie he died inside.  
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the faded scar wrapped about his neck that finally convinces Rose.


	28. All that remains after death

“How old were you when you died?”  
“Around seventeen.”  
“What year was it?”  
“I’ve forgotten, but I have been in this house as long as the Amporas.”  
“Why is it, do you think, that your story has not become an infamous tragedy of the town? Every self-respecting suburban hell has some kind of murder house to lay claim to.”  
“I’m not certain. Perhaps the authorities and media felt capitalising on the unsolved murders of two innocent teenagers was too cruel?”  
“Do you know if your case has gone cold yet? Why haven’t your family pressed the issue?”  
“If you mean to suggest that both mine and Nepeta’s families were glad to get rid of us, then I can only hope that you are mistaken.”  
Rose takes his hand carefully and turns it over in hers, examining his nails “Tell me, does your hair still grow?”  
Equius gives me an uncertain look “No. Not that I’ve noticed.”  
Fist stuffed against my mouth, all I can do is try not to burst out laughing at this point. Rose accepted the revelation of ghosts and a possible afterlife with frightening speed. The look on her face is a familiar one, a slight smile that betrays an almost predatory hunger for knowledge I’m used to seeing on her when you loose her in an ancient history exhibit at a museum. She is far from afraid. She is the most animated I have seen her since she discovered that my ‘problem’ actually had a medical diagnosis (Narcissistic Personality Disorder- JOY!!!).  
Squinting, she looks for a hint of a pulse in the blackened veins that are visible in Equius’s hand, then presses her fingers to his wrist.  
“Well you certainly are dead. No denying that.”  
Equius makes a harrumphing noise at the back of his throat “I thought so, but I wasn’t exactly sure.”  
He knows Rose to some extent. He watched her zoom in and out of the house in our earlier years (on the rare occasions Pa was feeling up to me having some friends around) and drop by notes and homework that I had missed when we grew older. Still, I don’t think he spent enough time in her general vicinity to be remotely prepared for the true Lalonde experience.  
I cannot wait to set her on Gamzee.  
Releasing his hand, Rose tents hers on her knees in a very business-like manner “It would seem to me that your case has been forgotten.”  
He cocks an eyebrow “Not by my family, I would hope.”  
She continues as if she hasn’t heard him “Rather, abandoned by the proper authorities on either side of death. Now you’re certain you have never encountered a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it, or a figure seemingly sculpted from a similar type of heavenly light?”  
“Fanfare of trumpets.” I manage through my fingers.  
“Nothing of the sort.” his face flashes for a minute, the emotion wiped off it as if an invisible hand smacked his expression right off.  
I’ve noticed he tends to do this when asked about what he knows.  
Soon enough, the discomfort is plain on him again as he inches away from Rose on the couch “I’m just here. I haven’t got a caseworker or…or a guardian spirit. I’m just here.”  
Rose picks up on this immediately “Oh? Is that so?”  
She has a natural knack for knowing when people are lying, which has gotten me into trouble a lot of times “Are you certain?”  
“Somebody’s telling him somethin’.” I offer.  
He gives me a wounded look “I would hardly call what you’re referring to as a source of help.”  
Rose scoots a little closer to him “How many years again, have you been here?”  
“Seventeen.”  
“Ah. You see, that’s almost my entire lifetime. That’s only a year short of Eridan’s entire lifetime, come tomorrow. From what you can remember (she resists the urge to punctuate this with air quotes), you were just a little bit younger than us when you and your friend were killed. That’s two life-times that you have spent almost exclusively under this roof, as I understand it.”  
“Get to the point, please.” says Equius patiently.  
I’ll give him credit- he’s not going to play Rose’s mind-games.  
The corner of her mouth turns up “What I’m saying is how much more time do you want to spend here? And I don’t mean under this roof, I mean in this life. Knowing Eridan I don’t doubt he would take you to college with him, everywhere he went if you wanted him to…”  
She pauses, shooting me the briefest and coldest look.  
“The bottom line is whether or not you want to move on,” she continues “I expect that you do.”  
“I do.” he confirms.  
I clear my throat “It’s not like we haven’t been tryin’. I mean, I’ve been tryin’ to figure out what w-we’re gonna do about Gamzee. Sol’s thinking on it too.”  
“Sol?” repeats Rose.  
Whoops.  
“Yeah. Sol knows too.”  
She rolls her eyes “That might have been a good thing to tell me, Eridan. How long has he known about Equius?”  
My concept of time has sort of melted ever since Equius crawled out of the wall “A bit.”  
“Well why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she seems offended that I apparently confided in my most hated enemy before I went to her for help.  
I hold up my hands, trying to placate her “Wasn’t like that, Rosie, he sorta broke into my locker and stole a bit of Eq’s spine. Still got no bloody idea how it got in there.”  
Her eyebrows shoot up “Alright, that is it. I want to know who you’re talking to, Equius, and I want to talk to them myself. I want answers.”  
“Jesus, Rose! Why don’t we light ourselves some torches and chase him up a w-w-windmill w-while we’re at it?”  
Equius breaks in “I assume you were building up to asking me who I’m in contact with?”   
She nods “Of course.”  
He presses his mouth into a tight line, fixing his eyes to the floor “I’m…I’m not sure that it would be the most productive use of your time to try talking with him.”  
“’Him’,” Rose grows thoughtful “It’s not God, is it?”  
He gives her a weird look “Uh, no. As far as I know there’s only a system, not a God.”  
Rose extracts the saint’s medallion out from under her shirt and inspects it with an air of disappointment “I suppose it was a bit of a long shot…well I only wear this for my mother, anyway. St Martin, the patron of drunks.”  
“You’re not Catholic.” I retort.  
“You don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate the usefulness of their saints.” she tucks the necklace under her shirt.  
Equius clears his throat “If you’re dead set on seeing him…we’re going to need the car.”

Rose drives.   
She takes her directions from Equius who, being the cryptic asshole he is, has refused to tell us where we’re going and seems to be taking us on a deliberately obscure, winding route through the darkened city streets to keep us from figuring it out.  
I took shotgun and Equius and Ahab are in the back. The dog tore out of the house when she heard the car engine starting up and leapt into the backseat, scaring Rose so badly she actually screamed, although I drowned her out by a fair few octaves. Don’t ask me how the dog is suddenly solid and can leave with her bones in the backyard, but I’m just glad she won’t be stranded at home. I was kind of worried about her, underneath a current of more pressing worries, that the demon might try to assimilate her while we were gone and turn her into some kind of hell hound.  
She lolls happily in Equius’s lap. Rose glances at her frequently in the rear-view mirror, revolted and fascinated in equal parts.  
“I’m so sorry.” she says for about the fifth time since we pulled out of the drive “Why didn’t you tell me he got Captain Ahab?”  
“It kind of slipped my mind.” I say guiltily.  
“Turn here.” says Equius.  
Rose obliges “Well that cements it. He is simply too dangerous to let run amok, this…character. What did you say his name was?”  
“Gamzee.” Equius and I say in unison.  
“What in blazes is that name? I get the sentiment behind ‘Equius’, but what the hell is a ‘Gamzee’?”  
“What sentiment?” I ask her under my breath.  
“It has to do with the Latin root ‘equus’-”  
I fail to suppress a giggle “Isn’t that an erotic play about blinding horses?”   
“Yes, Dad named us both after a horse, I know it’s hysterical.” says Equius sharply “Gamzee is short for James.”  
“How…how is that short for James?” now it’s Rose’s turn to snort.  
“I remind you he was high as the sky half of the time on his prescriptions.” that must be the second time I’ve ever heard Equius snap at somebody “Left at the next lights.”  
“What do you mean by ‘us’, by the way?” asks Rose.  
“He’s got a brother.” I say.  
She blinks “And is this brother still alive?”  
“Hopefully.” Equius scratches Ahab behind her ear.  
“Am I to infer that you have no interest in tracking down what remains of your family?” asks Rose testily.  
He nods “As you said, I’m getting ready to leave this world, not trying to give myself any more reason to get stuck in it.”  
Rankled, I turn around in my seat and glare at him “I know it’s not peaches and cream, your bein’ here, but it ain’t the horrible torture you’re makin’ it sound like.”  
Equius smiles just a little bit “Are you certain of that?”  
“Did you intend for us to end up at the cemetery?” asks Rose.  
My blood runs cold “Fuck off.”  
I turn around. In front of us, hills with rows and rows and rows of uniform gravestones roll out in front of us. Towards the front of the cemetery (the back from our point of view) are where the show-off graves are, with the giant stone angels looming over the graves and the weeping cherubs and the needlessly creepy inscriptions that are supposed to leave some kind of depressing impression. At one point, Cronus drove past this place three times a week when he was doing sports at a nearby training facility. He told me on one of his phone calls home how he would silently urge Pa to go faster, to leave the sprawling graves behind lest they recognise the sickness in him and try to keep him from clearing the place.  
Now I kind of get what he means, with Equius in the car. During the day, this is a sad place full of harmless dead people. In the half light and with two ghosts in the back seat, it looks like a zombie’s choice hang-out. For a moment, I’m tempted to stay in the car.  
“This person is buried here?”   
Equius nods.  
Rose narrows her eyes “Do we know this person already?”  
He says nothing.  
Rose gives me a very meaningful look which I have no idea how to interpret as she opens the car door. Gravel crunches under her feet, the only noise in the graveyard apart from Ahab’s panting.  
“Karkat’s here, right?” a shiver shoots up my spine “It ain’t Karkat is it?”  
Equius sighs “No. Had Karkat been my only form of social contact for the seventeen years preceding this, I assure you I would have become far worse than Gamzee by now.”  
He materialises outside the car with Ahab at his side. It occurs to me they might have been playing together upstairs while I talked with Cronus. Distracting her to distract me so I could focus on one tragedy at a time. Suddenly, the pocket in which the phone is nestled feels very heavy.  
“Let’s steer clear of Karkat while we’re here, yeah? I don’t think he’d be happy to see us. Not that we could even explain why we’re here…also he’s got Kankri with him.”  
Mituna’s ashes are interred somewhere in the left half of the cemetery, closer to the back. As of yet, he’s the only Captor that we know of in this grave. Most of the Captor family is still hanging around in Japan and going by the original family name of Shibata. I doubt anyone will be joining Mituna in his dirt nap soon, if we’re lucky.  
With a stab of panic, I notice Rose heading off in the direction of Mituna’s grave.  
“Hey!” I use a stage-whisper because I can just about make out the outline of two figures against the dark over the place I know Mituna’ grave to be “Rose, we’re not here for socialisin’!”  
“She’s going the right way.”  
Equius walks past me and falls in stride with me. Ahab snuffles at my legs and passes through me in her effort to butt me in the direction the others are taking.  
I follow them, cringing at every crunch of dirt, sure that Karkat and Kankri will whirl around and chew us out for being here. Kankri can go on for hours with the right kind of material and I get the feeling two sevenths of Karkat’s friendship group interfering with a tender moment in front of his friend’s tomb will set him off like a bomb.  
To my absolute horror, Rose calls out to “Karkat!”  
I grab Equius’s arm as the figures turn and shake it, like ‘CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE SHE JUST DID THAT?!’, but he doesn’t respond. He just looks tired, if a little bit relieved.  
“Promise me you won’t freak out?” he asks.  
“Depends on why you’re asking me not to.” I snipe.  
He guides me forward.  
Karkat calls back to Rose “IS THIS SOME KIND OF RSVP MOURNING SESSION?!”  
I hear another voice, somewhat quieter, telling him to shut up. But it’s not Kankri.  
Kankri is there alright, dressed in the red sweater I firmly believe is some kind of exoskeleton because I’ve literally never seen him without it, facing Mituna’s grave and not giving a single fuck about the invasion of teenagers. Even more terrifying ; Sollux is there.  
And there is somebody else sitting next to him.  
Call me slow, call me stupid and call me wilfully oblivious. You’d be right on all accounts.  
Mituna sits right beside Sol, making a daisy chain out of the flowers that grow on the grass over the top of his own grave. He looks up.  
Equius waves.  
Mituna waves back, standing up and shouting “Took you long-a-fucking-nuff to bring him!”  
Karkat, Kankri and even Sol act as if they haven’t heard a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to get us pumped up for the next chapter, there is Erisol.  
> Finally, actually, Erisol.


	29. All that remains lives in the cemetery

While Sol takes in the sight of Rose and Equius standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Ahab carving tight, excited circles around Mituna’s memorial stone, I am busy staring at the man himself. He wears the same shit-eating grin I remember him having most of the time I knew him, if a little pinched and pale.   
Rose doesn’t notice him at all.  
“You’ve grown.” observes Kankri, addressing either me or Rose with a feigned interest.  
The shortest sentence I have ever heard out of his mouth.  
“You really have.” Mituna stands up and holds his hand up to his shoulder “Last time I saw you, you were only up to here.”  
“Thanks for getting here so fast.” Sol seems to have recovered from his shock sufficiently to start inventing a lie for us.  
He turns apologetically to Kankri and Karkat, cringing. Kankri shrugs.  
“The addition to the group doesn’t bother me. Where does it say I have the monopoly on who is allowed to visit Mituna and when they are permitted to do so?”  
“Good to see you again, Kankri.” lies Rose “Seems that the big sibs are always off doing their own thing nowadays.”  
Glancing at me, Kankri’s expression sours “That’s what university does, makes us independent.”  
“Independent from the ‘rents,” mutters Karkat “But cemented to the family couch.”  
Kankri and Karkat could be twins. They are often mistaken for being that when standing shoulder-to-shoulder, because Kankri is almost exactly as short as him, although he does look older and more mature. Still, the only real difference between the two of them apart from the age is the fact that Kankri does have pigment in his skin, whereas Karkat can be mistaken for a well-dressed snowman in the winter.  
The same was once said about Mituna and Sol who were pretty much the same height constantly after Sol’s ‘blossoming’, which saw him growing a foot and a half practically over-night at the age of thirteen. They had the same bright eyes (but Mituna’s are a nice, normal black instead of heterochromatic), the same black-blonde hair determined to go in every direction at once, the same scarecrow-proportions and even shared a diagnosis, although Mituna’s was somewhat more severe.  
Like, way more severe.  
I’m not sure which of them to look at. The thought of Mituna being a ghost had absolutely never occurred to me, but if I was going to imagine him as undead I would have imagined him in the neat clothes he was burned in. I definitely wouldn’t have predicted that he would chose to spend his afterlife dressed in knee-length shorts and a striped yellow-black, bumble-bee-ass shirt and bedroom slippers, but that’s Mituna for you.  
Sol looks at me “Can I show you that thing, now?”  
Weirdly, I feel a kind of nervous prickle at the thought of marching off into the graves alone with Sol. I glance between him and Mituna then to the corner of my eye and Equius, who is making shooing motions. He gestures for Rose to wait. She isn’t too happy about it, but she nods almost imperceptibly, and links her arm through Karkat’s.  
“Did you braid my hair this morning?” I hear him say as I follow Sol into the cemetery.  
“Not me. Must have been a ghost.”  
Ahab bolts to Sol’s side and tries to put her paws on his legs, but they sink through so she has to be content with padding along at his side.  
Mituna appears at my elbow. I’m still not quite sure how to react to him. He is a ghost in the same way that Equius is a ghost: non-corporeal, silent, drained of his colour and giving off the vibe that he is not exactly here, even though I can clearly see him with my own two eyes. Which raises the question: can Sol?  
“No, he can’t.” says Mituna, as if reading my mind “He can’t see me. I’ve tried everything. I used to know there was a thing about him, you know? A weird little thing that made it hard for him to fit in and made his moods go everywhere and I knew it wasn’t what I had. Bipolar disorder? No, not Sol, but that’s what it was the closest to, the easiest thing for the doctors to say.”  
Now that we’re out of earshot, Sol rounds on me. He is so angry for a minute I think he’s going to hit me.  
“You told Rose?” he spits “Why the fuck would you tell Rose?”  
“Also he’s just grumpy,” continues Mituna “Hormonally grumpy with, like, little to no idea of how to interact in the first place so it’s super bad that he can’t keep his mouth shut, and when you add in the stress of being the only one able to see ghosts then it’s a wonder I offed myself first…”  
Obviously, Sol can’t hear nor see Mituna.  
Equius can, though, and it takes him some serious effort to pretend there is no one there.  
“I had to tell somebody.”  
“You told me!” he retorts.  
My heart is trying to dash itself to pieces against my ribs “Uh, yeah, no I fuckin’ didn’t, you broke into my locker and stole the bit of spine and my shirt.”  
His face colours “I did not steal your stupid shirt!”  
It’s funny how it’s taken me this long to realise he has stolen my shirt. It’s actually kind of pathetic how slow I am, like I don’t even want to know or think about why Sol is doing what he’s doing.  
“That was me.” grins Mituna “I put the bone in your bag.”  
I’m going to smack one of the Captors and I can’t decide which one.  
Equius gives me a pitying look that makes me want to add him to my list of ‘those I must beat’, but I have to retain my composure.  
“Look, Sol, I really don’t fuckin’ care why you nicked my shirt (I’m trying not to) or why you nicked Eq’s bone, alright? I get that you hated being alone in this shit-”  
“I still am!” he sweeps his arm across the graveyard “You can’t see a thing! There are dozens of people, all over the place. There’s one right behind you!”  
I can’t help but turn around, the back of my neck prickling. No one is there.  
Sol scrubs at his eyes with his sleeve “I just- fucking hell, Eridan, why the hell would you drag Rose into this?”  
“Are you bloody jealous of her or something?”  
He freezes up “No. Jealous of what? Her alcoholic mother?”  
“That’s a low blow.” remarks Mituna.  
He leans casually on a headstone, watching the match like it’s the finals in a tournament of his favourite sport. Equius has just about reached the limit of the amount of shit he can take in one morning, I’m sure, but he’ll just have to stick it out until Sol and I have got whatever this is out of the way.  
I take a deep breath “Listen to me. We literally have no idea what we are doing and because of that my father is in hospital. He could’a died, do you understand? He could have broken his neck. The demon could have flayed him like he flayed Ahab (happily getting her head scratched by Mituna) or he could’a done something worse! He almost killed Dave and Jade’s going to be institutionalised for God knows how long because of what he made her do, so we just can’t wait around much longer. Last time I checked, you and me aren’t exactly making any lee-way on this whole exorcism thing.”  
“We did find Nepeta.” says Equius.  
Sol’s mouth drops open “How come you didn’t tell me?!”  
“I was gonna, but then my dad called me and made a death rattle down the phone, so I got a bit distracted!”  
Sol looks hurt “You could have come and got me for help. I wasn’t that far away…if you didn’t want to go home, you could have just stayed at my house instead of wandering around the city.”  
Slow-motion car wreck in my chest. Seatbelts kill more than they save, especially in metaphorical situations where the ribs represent the seatbelt and the passenger is the heart, which has just about succeeded in its conquest to burst out of me messily.  
“Slow down, hornball. He’s not eighteen yet.” chirps Mituna.  
“Sol, don’t bullshit me, just tell me why you really don’t want Rose to know about Equius.”  
His gaze falls to the soft grass “I just…you didn’t tell her about me, did you?”  
“No.”  
“I mean about the- the mirror thing.”  
“No, I didn’t.”  
“Good.” he glances up at me anxiously “That’s my story to tell.”  
I nod uncertainly “She doesn’t need to know, anyway. All she needs to know is the stuff about Eq.”  
He glowers “I don’t think she does. I think you just don’t trust me.”  
“Whoa! Slow the fuck down, right now! Why the hell should I trust you? You strong-armed your way into this and you’ve been nothing but unhelpful and evasive since the get-go! You expect me to trust the guy that’s been beatin’ me up since kindergarten just because w-we’re seein’ the same dead guy? Pardon me if bringing in someone whose hobby happens to be the occult for a bit of sense!”  
His eyes flash “Rose doesn’t know shit.”  
“Neither do you!” I retort “You’re practically swimming in these translucent motherfuckers and you haven’t got the foggiest idea of how to deal with them!”  
“Clear off, you guys,” Mituna addresses the thin air “God, you people will do anything for entertainment. Go play with the crows or something. This is a serious emotional moment here.”  
It sure is trying to be, Mituna, it sure is trying to be.  
Sol presses a hand to his forehead “Listen, I don’t want to…I don’t want to fight with you. Not here. I really don’t want to be here. Can we go somewhere else?”  
“You want me to leave Rose here?”  
He gives me a pained look “I need to get out of here.”  
Oh right. The ghosts. Regretting my harsh words, I glance towards the shapes of Rose and the Vantases, still gathered around Mituna’s headstone.  
“I’m not leaving Rose here.” I say firmly “I won’t leave you here either, but since we’re all together right now we might as well find somewhere to talk about this. I’m taking the day off and so is she. If you could-”  
“Yeah. I can get the day off.”  
I push a hand through my tangled hair “We might make some progress today.” I almost believe myself.  
“Can we…can we just talk for a minute first? They won’t believe we’d come back so quickly.  
Something a little wild in Sol’s eyes that makes me glad I have two ghosts with me. But still…  
In this weak lighting, Sol looks so frail. Surrounded by the stone in the shape of teeth, reminding me of those who have been and gone while Sol stands among them no matter where he is. Never alone, except, somehow, with his own brother.  
I’m hugging him before I can think about it.  
He’s all skin and bones. He must be able to feel my heart hammering against his chest. He must be able to feel everything, because I’m sure I just went completely transparent and that my organs are on display for the graveyard to admire.  
Hesitantly, he puts his arms around me too. My arms around his shoulders, his around my waist. His head buried in my shoulder, while I stare at the graveyard over his back. I close my eyes and the world shrinks. Distantly, I hear Mituna cackle and Equius shush him, probably dragging him away to give us some privacy.  
“What do you want to talk about?” my voice is muffled in his jacket.  
He has to consider this for a while before he decides on: “Is your dad gonna be ok?”  
“He’ll be fine.”  
“Good.”  
Suddenly, he pushes me away. Rudely, roughly, without a word of explanation, and stalks off in the direction of Mituna’s grave.  
There are so many ways I want to react to this I’m still trying to pick one, frozen on the spot like a shell-shocked moron with my mouth slightly agape.  
Mituna melts through a nearby tombstone “I don’t know what we’re going to do with that boy, but we simply must do something, don’t you think, Mother?”  
Equius takes him by the collar the way a cat picks up its kitten in its teeth and lifts him to his feet.  
“Sorry.”   
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” I exclaim.  
“Nothing. My bipolar disorder went away when I bit the dust.” says Mituna smugly.  
Equius sighs “I suppose I have a lot of explaining to do.”  
“Do it fast, or Sol might think Eridan’s weeping over him.”  
I lash out at Mituna and my hand sinks harmlessly into the middle of his chest. He regards me with a slightly wounded, but more amused look.  
“Can you not shut up?” I hiss “I seem to remember that about you. Couldn’t shut your face for more than ten seconds.”  
Equius reaches around and extracts my wrist from Mituna’s chest “Long story short he turns up at the house sometimes and delivers some cryptic slop about the afterlife he probably heard from his fellow tenants, then dissolves into the thin air.”  
“With an evil cackle,” adds Mituna “I always make sure to go out with an evil cackle.”  
I glance over my shoulder, tracking Sol’s progress. Karkat will be concerned he has brained me and left me to die somewhere in the graves, so he’ll probably come looking for me in a moment. I don’t have much time.  
“Quick question: how-w-w the flying fuck do you get into my house?”  
Equius’s face pales “Don’t ask him that.”  
Mituna’s face darkens in a sly way “It’s a complicated process, my friend. Technically I never leave my grave, because it’s a simple case of imagining myself some-place and getting some-place without ever leaving the comfort of my grave spiritually nor physically. It’s called an anal projection.”  
“Astral.” corrects Equius.  
“That’s what I said. Anal projection.”  
Equius meets my incredulous expression with a resigned look and mouths ‘just run’.  
“I’ve been all over this town with my anal projection.”  
I start walking.  
“Hell, I even follow you guys around sometimes. You, Rose and Karkat and Dave. Sollux, I am like his guardian angel and he doesn’t even know it because he can’t see me.” Mituna falls in stride with me and keeps up easily no matter how much I increase my pace “Isn’t that weird? You can’t see ghosts, except for the one in your basement and the ones the guy in your basement knows, but Sol? He’s got ghosts up to his eyes and he doesn’t know that the most important ghost of them all is here. I’m guessing Eq’s your link to the spiritual world, and as for Sol’s little erectile dysfunction of a loophole? I’m guessing it’s either puberty or he doesn’t want to see me. You know if you look at a scribble and start picking out shapes, then every time you see that scribble all you can see is the single shape and it can’t be anything else anymore? Like that, except reversed. I’ve been reading Rose’s books over her shoulders for like a year, and lemme tell you, there is all kinds of shit like this in psychology.”  
Ahab shoots out of nowhere and charges off to the grave, excited beyond thought for some reason.  
She stops suddenly and barks, then starts making her circles again around an invisible playmate. So there really are ghosts I’m not seeing here.  
I lean towards Equius “Does everyone stay here when they die?”  
He shakes his head “Most linger because of unfinished business, according to Mituna. This is my first time seeing the graveyard…they are rather hideous.”  
“Like that boy from the bathroom?” I suggest “With the needle hanging out of his arm?”  
Equius nods.  
Then he stops moving or talking because we have reached the others. Refusing to meet my eyes, Sol keeps his trained on Mituna’s headstone. Mituna strolls up to him, throws an arm around his narrow shoulders and starts talking about how great his view of the cemetery is and what hundreds of wet gravestones smell like when it rains or storms.  
“…avoiding responsibility of keeping up with my education,” Kankri is saying to Rose, who will have had him spill most of his darkest fears and secrets in the ten or so minutes I’ve been away “I simply cannot abide their company, continuing on as if Mituna was never a part of the group. Do you know for a very long time we thought Mituna and Cronus would begin a relationship? Not that Mituna’s sexual persuasion was to ‘swing’ (literally does air quotes here) in that direction, but you know there can be exceptions to those ‘rules’ that govern the attractions a person experiences.”  
“That is a well-founded reason for wanting to avoid your life in general, but the death of a friend is not an excuse to orchestrate your own removal from the world.” says Rose patiently.  
“I cannot believe you are doing this,” Karkat says with awe “I can’t even get him to call Cronus by name and he screws his face up whenever I mention Eridan so it looks like he’s going to puke, but the puke won’t be able to come through his for once tightly shut mouth. Twin jets of puke issuing from the nostrils. It was going to be glorious.”  
“Yuck.” say Equius and I in unison.  
Karkat turns to me “What? I’m impressed. She’s good at this shit. I would pay her to jimmy him open like this all the time, but in food or something.”  
“Where did Ahab go?” asks Equius, turning around “She was here a moment ago.”  
Karkat sidles up to me “Did Sol try some moves on you or something? He’s acting like you rejected him harshly.”  
I speak up to make sure Sol can hear me “He showed me his dick. I slammed it between two rocks.”  
“Funny, Eridan, really fucking funny.”  
He squares his shoulders and stays quiet.  
“…far-fetched idea that I am somehow harbouring some kind of affection for Cronus Ampora and I suggest you nip it in the bud. I would much rather you suspect the purity of my relationship with Rus or Meulin than with that…unpleasant person.”  
Rose nods, as if she wants nothing more than to hear his flustered denial “And how does my questioning this make you feel?”  
Equius scans the graveyard “I hope she hasn’t wandered off. We’ll never get her back in the car.”  
“…interesting that you only come to see me when there’s company. Like Parisians only ever visit the Eiffel Tower when their non-Parisian friends come to visit.” Mituna is saying “Putting on a good who, are we? You should try crying a little harder, though, I don’t believe you really miss me. Not with these pathetic rivulets. Give me Niagara!”  
And suddenly, underneath the din of voices, there is a very soft one right in my ear and a cold form pressed into my back “I lied.”  
I respond without thinking, whispering back “About what?”  
“I can leave my bones.” says Nepeta.  
Her hands are knotted into little fists that have a firm grasp on my jacket. Her hair tickles the back of my neck and I feel her lips move against my spine as she speaks to me.  
“I know-w you can,” so far no one has noticed me talking “But why did you lie?”  
“I don’t know how to…how to be anymore. To be anything.”  
“You are a ghost.” I point out civilly “You’re not supposed to know. You’re not supposed to be a well-balanced human being anymore. You’re only here because you have a serious reason to be.”  
“But I don’t. Why would I want to stay in this furicking (what?) world where my friend can kill me and my best friend and no one will even remember us?”  
“What, you think I’m going to be able to forget this after it’s all over? Not with all the drugs in China to help me.”  
“You’re stupid,” she says “If you think this will ever end.”  
Her weight disappears. A cold breeze catches my hair and clothes and spins me around a little, making me face the front gates of the graveyard. Ahab is there. A boy with dark hair and darker eyes stoops over her, scratching her behind the ears. Nepeta appears at his side and threads her arm through his. I’m too far away to see her expression, but I get the feeling she doesn’t have one at the moment.  
“Do you see Ahab?” Equius has his back to me.  
“No.”  
The boy straightens up, waves to me, and strolls through the front gates and out of the cemetery with Nepeta trotting along on his arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you look at that? Physical contact. Between Eridan and Sol. We are making progress towards this promised ship, people, we really are.  
> Also, there are so many damned ghosts in this fiction I'm beginning to think it might be a good idea to call Ghost busters on myself.


	30. Fuck this title system I need a fucking nap go away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After all the action in the last chapter, I figured we needed a break.  
> If the literary gods decide to smile at me i might be able to wrap up this fic before it hits 40 goddamned chapters.

Knowing the way my luck tends to play out, I’m not at all surprised that we end up driving Kankri and Karkat back to their house, with Sol following us in the other car. I suppose common sense would dictate that I got into the car with Sol while Rose cracked Kankri’s skull open and showed Karkat the most interesting secrets (seriously, I’ve never seen Karkat more smugly satisfied except for the time he tricked Kanaya into admitting she had the hots for Rose), but common sense also dictates that sane people wanting to avoid fights don’t climb into a car alone with the guy they may have just fought with, who might be nursing a crush of some sort on them.  
Equius volunteered to keep him company on the drive to Chez Vantas. At the time I was still glancing over my shoulder, in a quiet frenzy of fear that Gamzee himself was going to stick his face between my shoulder-blades and complain about his metaphysical struggles, so I just muttered an agreement without knowing what he was saying. Ahab came back on her own, smelling of incense for some reason, and was happy to hop into the car after Sol and Equius. While I can’t pretend this didn’t stamp on my delicate feelings just a little bit, I also have bigger things to worry about.  
If that demon touches my dog again I’m going to find a way to kill him again.  
Also, why do I get the feeling that Sol is burning a hole in the back of my head, staring at me as he follows the car? Because he is. I’ve twisted around a couple of times when we’re stopped at a red light to check and he keeps on glaring at me unabashedly.  
“Sol’s staring at me.” I tell Karkat.  
Karkat glances over his shoulder “Deal with it.”  
“Does he like me?”  
“He has one of your shirts,” Karkat rolls his eyes in a way that makes it look as if he is about to faint “Not under his pillow. I don’t think it’s his jerk-off fuel or whatever, ‘cuz it’s hung up in his closet, but it’s freaky as fuck.” he gives me a suspicious look “What the hell were you two conspiring about earlier?”  
“Nothing.” I’m not even sure if we were talking about ghosts or if we were just shouting at each other.  
“I saw you hug him.”  
Cornered, I fall back onto my old freaking-out habits “No you didn’t.”  
His red eyes bore into me, and combined with Sol’s still digging into the back of my neck I wouldn’t be surprised if my head explodes under the pressure “Yes I did. You put your noodle-arms around that thin shit’s neck and nuzzled him all tender-like.”  
Did I nuzzle him? “No I didn’t.” why would I nuzzle him?  
“Yes you did. I half expected you to go down on him right in the middle of the field of dead people. Not even half. I was like, so expectant of it, it was killing me not to point and shout ‘INFEDELS!’ at the top of my fucking shriek lungs and do a rage-dance.”  
“Karkat, can you get off my back, please. I’m worried as fuck about my dad and Sol’s freaking me out and-” I stop short of saying ‘there are dead people everywhere’ when I catch Rose’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, giving me a warning look.  
Mercifully, Karkat takes the clue. He turns his attention to the conversation in the front seat without another word to me.  
“…I do not love him and I never will love him. Do you presume that because he obviously adores me that I should replicate those feelings? No, it makes me uncomfortable in ways that I cannot describe, and the attention is entirely unwanted. If I were to enter a relationship with him I would only be able to reflect his affections in the way that the moon reflects sunlight…”  
I miss her, right now.  
I don’t know why.  
When she was here, it wasn’t like we could talk to each other about everything. Most of our interactions were strained and awkward because we knew we were going to end up fighting, that I would accuse Feferi of preferring Sol’s company to mine (for good reason) and that she would take my criticisms until she got frustrated enough to respond with some of her own, then we would both say too much and worry we would never repair the rift we most certainly just tore. The cycle would start afresh the next day.  
Still, we had our moments. There would be a shitty rom-com or gore-flick on the screen, we finger-sparred for the best pieces of popcorn in the bowl, we laughed at the bad acting and the over-the-top villain deaths and we really loved each other like best friends do. The world had to shrink for both of us to really enjoy each other, which was unfortunate. But it’s also a fact of life.  
Some people you fit with, even if you still piss each other off. Some people you feel like you should fit with and the two of you piss each other off trying to make it work.  
I stare at my phone, gathering the courage to use it even though a demon might interfere with the call. I spend another minute formulating what I want to say to her. The last time we spoke was over a month ago, but with my father in the hospital and my birthday less than 24 hours away, I should be able to scrounge up some topics. Assuming she responds of course.  
So I drop her a quick text : ‘Pa’s in small coma. 18 t/row. Fact check w KK if u needta. Call me.’  
I have figured out she doesn’t open her text immediately if it’s from me. With anyone else, she will reply at the speed of light. But she’s spent too much of her time rushing around to please me already.  
I stow the phone in my pocket and resolve not to worry about it.  
“Karkat.”  
“What?”  
“Can I put my head on your shoulder? I need a nap.”  
Part of me hopes it will make it clear to Sol that I am not interested in starting whatever he wants to start with him, if he sees me settling into Karkat’s reluctant arms for a quick nap. The other part of me wants to wake up to find that he has insisted on trading cars and spots with Karkat. Before I can decided which would be better, I pass out.


	31. All that remains of Gamzee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here comes trouble.

I sleep for three hours, peacefully, dreamlessly, moved from car to couch. When I wake up on my own couch, I am somehow more exhausted than I was before I went to sleep, but then, I have woken up feeling that way after 16 hours of sleep on a weekend. A blanket has been tucked neatly around me, a pillow under my head, and a dead dog is curled up at my feet. A second ghost is sitting right on my knees in a way that would probably break my legs if he had any weight to speak of.  
I order Mituna off me with a fuzzy tongue and search the room for Equius.  
He’s sitting on the floor in front of an armchair “How do you feel?”  
I pull a hand through my hair and think about taking a shower to wash the smell of the graveyards off me “’Bout how-w I look, I’m guessin’…Rose still here?”  
“I’m still here!” calls Rose “I’ve just finished informing the proper authorities of our absences. I’m afraid it’s quite easy to affect my mother’s voice by merely adding a drunken slur to the words,” she appears in the doorway with the landline in hand “It’s nine o’clock, by the way. I talked to Mituna about our situation at great length while you were asleep.”  
She glances at him with a measured distaste. She and Mituna never got along very well and it is foolish of me to hope that they will now, especially with Mituna in something like his right mind again. If anything, that just makes it worse. They stand at two opposite poles: Rose demanding co-operation and good sense, and Mituna spreading chaos and blood-lust as cheerfully as a person picks a daisy for their lover.  
Equius and I exchange a glance and I see we have that same sickly look, preparing ourselves for the cluster-fuck of idiocy that is sure to ensue in mere seconds.  
So I address my question to him, hoping Mituna will keep his mouth shut “What did you tell her?”  
“I told her about Mituna.” he says anxiously “And I recounted our first meeting outside of school.”  
My hand automatically goes up to the pedant “Oh yeah? What do you think of that, Rose?”  
Rose furrows her brow “Well I wish you had told me when you first introduced Equius and I to each other. It might have been nice to know about the over-dosed druggie in the boy’s bathroom. Mituna was eager to talk about his abilities in the field of astral projection.”  
“I’m the best anal projectionist I know.” adds Mituna.  
Hopefully, Equius has had the good sense to exclude the bit about Sol stealing my shirt and apparently hanging it in his closet “It’s not like you ever go in there.”  
The corners of her mouth twitch.  
“She goes in there to whiz when the girls’ is all full up.” grins Mituna “One time I was following Sol around for the day and she just strolls in while Sol’s got his dick out at the urinal.”  
Rose smirks “Never before have I triggered such a desperate struggle to stow away the junk.” she grows serious again as fast as a ball snapping back to its paddle-board “He explained to me how he orchestrated your meeting in the school, believing it was a solemn duty of his as Equius only ‘bro’ to get him out into the world again.”  
Mituna breaks in “I had a long list of shit to explain that we didn’t know. Like about God or whatever, the afterlife, why we’re here and some people get to move on, how to get rid of a demon, why Eq’s…” he struggles for an appropriate term for a moment “Homestuck.”  
“Homestuck?” I repeat.  
“Well I couldn’t leave the house under my own steam for a long time…or I didn’t want to. We’re not certain which it is, but the bathrooms at your school was the first time I had been out of there since before you and Cronus and Dualscar moved in.”  
Mituna scratches Ahab behind the ear, who pants happily “It’s a down-right fucking shame your first breath of fresh air in seventeen years had to smell like boy-piss.”  
I reach up to push him off my legs and am pleasantly surprised when it works. Mituna picks himself up off the floor and retreats to another chair. Rose rushes to fill the gap. She scoots me over and starts to comb through my dishevelled hair with a brush she must have brought herself.  
“What did-” I shudder through a yawn “What did you guys talk about while I was out? Any decisions made?”  
“We decided we have a couple of options,” she tugs the brush gently through a stubborn snarl “We should make a serious dent in them today, before someone else is injured.”  
“Too soon, Rosie.” says Mituna “At least wait until Mr A wakes up.”  
My heart skips a beat “No…no new-ws, then, from the hospital?”  
Equius shakes his head.  
“Don’t worry. It’s not supernatural,” Mituna inspects the quick of his nails “I went over to the hospital while Rose and Kankri wrapped up their therapy session and checked him. He’s fine. In fact, I think he’s just dead tired, you know? Work and sleeping cancers and jack-ass son one of two is mysteriously released from his stupor. His body is probably just seizing the opportunity for a big old power-nap.”  
“What do you mean sleeping can-ow! Rose!”  
“Sorry.”  
Mituna shrugs “I mean I can smell death on him.”  
Equius shoots him a venomous glare “What Mituna means is that ghosts have an innate ability to sense others who came very close to death, but who survived it. He smelled your father’s brush with death, not a relapse.”  
“Perhaps Mituna should stop talking for the time being,” says Rose sharply “In short, we can go to the bridge in the park where Equius and Ne…Nepeta, is it? Where they were killed and see if we can talk Nepeta around to sense. Mituna seems to think that’s the best way to reach a ghost, to just badger and badger them until whatever scrap of them that is keeping them here connects with the rest of who the person used to be and brings them back.”  
“It worked for me.” his eyes seem to fix on a distant point for a moment, then the impish glint comes back and I have to wonder if I imagined the glaze in the first place.  
“Badgering, huh?” I hope no one notices how I lick my lips nervously “That doesn’t seem too safe to me. What if the demon shows up with her?”  
“Equius said she was in the pool with you before and there was neither hide nor hair of the demon then.” she has almost finished combing through the tangles and is playing with the bouncy curls that brush the nape of my neck “At any rate, perhaps it will be good for us if the demon does show up, right? We may be able to talk us around.”  
Equius and I look at Ahab at the same time.  
“Or flay us.” I say.  
“That is much more likely.” agrees Equius.  
Ahab snorts in contentment.  
“There are only two living people in this room right now. Let’s not bring those numbers down if we can.”  
Rose continues as if she hasn’t heard us “Or we could attempt something like visiting Jade in her room to see if the demon is hanging around there.”  
This notion sends a stab of alarm through me “Pardon me, but who thinks that’s even a possibility?”  
I haven’t thought about Jade very often. Technically, her condition could be labelled as pretty solidly my fault. It’s in my nature to at once twist the blame on myself and spread it all over everybody else, but I haven’t given her situation enough consideration to even decide if I want to slap all the blame on the demon and the ghosts or claim it for myself. I’ve barely thought about Dave’s encounter with the demon either, the scars it left him with that were already fading by the time he showed them to me.  
Obviously, the demon is just playing with me. He’s had one helluva two weeks of messing with Eridan’s shit as well, so maybe the novelty of kicking the shit out of my friends (even thought I barely think about it, I’m so preoccupied with being afraid for my father and myself) and appearing out of nowhere with his catatonic kitty-bitch will wear off soon.  
How much more can he do to me after killing my dog and attempting to kill my dad in the same night?  
Probably best not to tempt him.  
“That’s a terrible idea.” I turn around and bat her hands and the brush away “I mean, a stupendously horrendous idea and we’re not goin’ to be doin’ that. What we’re gonna do is go back to the place where Eq and Peta died and we’re going to try to talk some sense into her. That alright with you, Eq?”  
I ask because his face is grey, greyer than normal, and he’s acting like somebody put a scorpion down the back of his hoodie.  
“Fine.” he says curtly “Take the car this time.”

Ghostly road-trips are now a thing apparently.  
What really freaks me out is the fact that people can clearly see Mituna and Equius, maybe even Ahab, while we’re driving. At one point we stop at a red light and we catch the kid in the next car over making faces at Mituna, returning his salute. Another time, a dog in the next lane over darts across the backseat of its owners’ car to bark at Ahab. It makes no kind of sense at all- Rose hadn’t the slightest clue Mituna was in the car or the graveyard until he apparently introduced himself to her while I was passed out, and from our experience so far, no one can see Equius unless I deliberately put them into contact with him. For good measure, I even had Rose touch the bone pendant while I was explaining it all to her.  
Do they react to Mituna, Equius or Ahab specifically? Are they reacting to only one of them? Did that other dog see Ahab simply because it was another dog? After all, animals are supposed to have some kind of extra-sensory mojo that allows them to see what humans typically don’t, hence the reason they’ve always got dogs losing their shit at ghosts and monsters in horror movies.  
All these questions and about fifty others with as little (meaning none whatsoever) chance of being answered are swirling in my head as I talk to Rose.  
She’s asking me about Sol and I’m lying as cleverly as I can. She knows I’m lying, since she can smell lies like a shark smells blood in the water, so all I can do is evade her questions in the ways that give the least away.  
This is hard enough to do with the added fact that I’m trying to drive at the same time.  
“I’ve noticed something off about Sollux,” she produced a set of knitting paraphernalia from her bag when we got in the car and is in the process of knitting something that resembles my stripy scarf (tucked around the bones in the backpack, which are at Rose’s feet, because I had this cuckoo notion sometime in my stupor and the rush to get into the ambulance that Equius might get cold outside of the house) “And I’m not talking about his bipolar disorder.”  
“What are you talking about, then?” playing stupid is remarkably easy for me.  
“You know what I’m talking about. You have mentioned it on a number of times, to me, to Karkat, to Fe-, uh, Kanaya and almost everyone else.”  
“Nice save there,” I say drily “You almost said a dirty word.”  
Mituna laughs.  
“You mean about how Sol creeps me out?” my mouth is dry, but the next words hop out as smoothly as if I actually planned on saying them “Maybe that’s because I know he likes me and I didn’t know how to deal with that for a while.”  
Rose pauses “Because he was your best friend’s boyfriend?”  
“Because he’s Sol. To the extent of my knowledge, or w-w-w-w-…the things I wanted to know-w, he hated me and I hated him. I wanted it that way.”  
Funny how you don’t realise the things you know, you’ve noticed, the things that have kept you from sleeping on hot nights and the things that have kept your eyes straying to the back of his head in classes until you taste them on your tongue. Funny, pathetic, take your pick. All I know is that my hands have begun to tremble slightly and the memory of Sol pressed against me in the graveyard is so vivid I swear I can feel his heart racing next to mine.  
“Past tense?” she gives me her patented eye-brow waggle before she can stop herself “Careful, Eridan, the man’s dead brother can hear every word.”  
“Sol needs something to pull his head out of his ass,” says Mituna cheerfully “You have my blessing.”  
Equius clears his throat “If…if you…um…if you want to start something, could you at least wait until I’m no longer bound to follow you around all the time?”  
Mituna slaps his knee and Rose almost pricks herself in the eye with one of her knitting needles in the effort to stifle her laughter.  
A flush creeps up the back of my neck “Listen, I’m not sayin’ I wanna start shit with Sol, I’m jus’ notin’ what needs to be addressed, alright? Yeah I thought it was fuckin’ creepy at first, but now it’s jus’ kinda…weird.”  
“Eq’s face is totally red. I want to know how to do that, Eq. How are you doing that without blood, Eq?”  
I catch sight of his face in the rear-view mirror. His head rests against the window, and his breath would be steaming it up if he could breathe. Black hair strewn over his pale face, dark eyes mounted in sockets so deeply bagged it looks painful. The most tired I’ve ever seen him and with the most simply contented little smile I’ve ever seen on him.  
If we were alone, I would tell him I’m sorry he never fell in love. I might tease him, ask him if he wants to get a quick snog in with me just so his lips don’t leave this world virgin (because he seems like the type of guy who’s a virgin at seventeen, doesn’t he?), then fly into a panic if he agreed. More than anything, I want us to be alone right now. All I wanted when we were alone was for everyone to know that I have a ghost around my neck, that I am being stalked by something I can’t explain, how afraid I am. Now, all I can think about is how much easier this drive would be if the car were silent.  
Still stuck in that traffic jam on the school-bus, but the trip is nearing its end.

Rose is curious about Nepeta. As we walk and Ahab darts ahead, sniffing at everything, she badgers Equius gently for details. He caves. I want to compliment Rose on getting him to crack open like a clam shell as much as I want to punch her in the face for being the one to accomplish it.  
The girl I saw is obviously different to the one that grew up with Equius, who he describes with a kind of heart-punching tinge of sadness in his voice. He knew her as a sweet girl who was too excited about life in general for her own good. She could fight like a demon (pardon the phrasing, he says) and frequently had to, whether it was in the defence of her friends or of herself, and she did have to defend herself a lot for a variety of reasons, from her obnoxiously bubbly personality to the trenchcoat Equius has come to believe was glued to her body, because he rarely saw her out of it even in the hottest months of summer.  
Rose and I expect anecdotes and Mituna seems to know some, but he doesn’t add anything. Equius doesn’t say much more than that they were best friends, utterly platonic despite the opposing genders, and grew up together. That’s it.  
“You saw her, right?” asks Mituna.  
I have to stop myself from saying ‘twice’ “Yes, I did.”  
“I’ve never seen her,” says Mituna wistfully “I know she’s gotta be a raving lunatic by now, sorry Eq, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”  
The forest is in sight. It’s hard to believe I was here as early as last night, scared out of my wits and clinging to Equius, not knowing what the multiple phone calls were really about- and even now, I’m not sure how many of those were made by Pa and how many by the demon, if any were at all.  
It’s hard to believe anything. These days, reality is more like a polite suggestion than an actual thing.  
Like the first few months of Pa’s cancer, just too goddamned soap-opera and far-fetched to condense into real life, with school and Feferi and all the other things I was sure had a right to be called ‘real’.  
Unconsciously, I reach for him. His hand slides into mine. The others don’t remark if they notice. Still, it would look really weird to pedestrians if there were any, like I am holding hand with thin air.  
“I should have made…some kind of effort.” he says it quietly, meant only for me although the others lean in and strain to hear “I should have asked Mituna to show me how to leave the house, but I deluded myself into thinking I absolutely could not until he forced me to.”  
I squeeze his hand “I know the feelin’. Not doin’ somethin’ you should’a until it’s too late I mean.”  
“They’re holding hands,” hisses Mituna “Poor Sollux.”  
Rose makes to kick him in the shins, but his ankle becomes mist-thin and her foot sails through him.  
I continue “We can fix it. I promise.”  
He shakes his head wordlessly.  
Before I know it, we’re at the bridge again. Ahab goes totally mad with delight. She zips off into the shrubbery and I make no effort to stop her. She has gone up to demons and sniffed them as casually as she used to piss on fire hydrants. Now that the demons have killed her, there’s not much more I can think of that they might do to her.  
“The water is quite shallow,” says Rose cautiously “Are you certain this is where you were killed? I fail to see how an area such as this that is clearly well-used and built-up could be the site of a murder.”  
“It wasn’t this way when they died, asshat.” snaps Mituna “In fact, that hat does not suit you at all Rose, so please take it right off your head this instant. Obviously this footpath was more remote when they were still sucking air.”  
“No it wasn’t.”  
Just like before, Nepeta leaps into the conversation without preamble nor invitation.  
Rose jumps a foot in the air, Mituna turns around with such a greedy interest it feels perverted and Equius and I slump in an identical, ‘so done with this shit’ manner.  
She looks basically the same as she did before, which isn’t encouraging. Rose’s breath catches in her throat at the sight of the wild, ragged girl spinning a rodent bone on her index finger that crouches off to the left of the path. Mituna gives the impression that he is just barely holding himself back from strolling up to Nepeta and examining her at all angles with a magnifying glass. As for me, I have to resist the urge to wave and ask her how her day has been going.  
Surprisingly, this time Ahab zips over to us and cowers behind my legs. Equius seems especially put off by this, although he has no way of knowing that the dog ran up to Nepeta quite fearlessly a few hours ago. Does that mean Ahab went for the demon instead, or has she realised in her limited doggy way that dead humans with dead animal pieces in their pockets are not good for other animals?  
Of course, the more important question I am asking myself at the moment is how the hell we’re going to fix her, and fix this. If I let this shit continue on its merry way for too much longer, I’m sure the demon will cheerfully smother Pa or kick Rose into the path of a moving train, or manipulate John this time and make it look like a lovers’ suicide when he makes him kill Dave then finish himself off (it’s what I’d do if I were a demon torturing a pair of boys who obviously share some unresolved sexual tension).  
So, how does one talk a girl they barely know off the ledge when she’s already dead?  
Fuck it.  
“So how’s your day been goin’?”  
I ignore the looks from the others, who clearly think I am insane.  
Nepeta mulls it over “I no longer have a concept of time. There is only ‘long’ and ‘not long’.”  
“That kinda counts. Like, you lost your ability to quantify time but you didn’t lose your ability to distinguish a ‘long’ day and a ‘not long’ day, but it looks like your adjectives w-went out the w-window-w,” wherever this spring of idiocy is running from, I can only hope it doesn’t dry up “So you do have a concept of time. So which one is today? ‘Long’ or ‘not long’.”  
“You’re irritating.” she decides.  
“Motion seconded.” says Mituna.  
Her dark eyes crawl over him “You’re dead.” then to Rose “You’re not.”  
Rose edges towards me and mutters out of the corner of her mouth “And your plan is?”  
“You were the one with plans.”  
She nods “But that was before I saw her…she’s not exactly…in the kind of state where one can reach her with reason and comfort, is she?”  
“W-well if you think about it, neither was I after Fef left but all I needed was…uh…”  
“A dead teenager.” suggests Rose “We have two of those.”  
Mituna glowers at her “I’m nineteen years old, thanks very much, and I am an adult.”  
Equius is about to say something to the contrary when he disappears. He just ceases to be. Mituna is gone, Rose is gone, and Nepeta’s face has come alive in abject fear.  
She leaps to her feet and she is pressed into my side before I can object, let alone register her movement.  
“Fuck you, Eridan,” she whimpers “Look what you did to me. I haven’t been scared of him for a long, long time.”  
She huddles into the small of my back again.  
“Where did they go?” panic ripples through me “Where did he put them?”  
“He didn’t put them anywhere,” she rasps “He put you somewhere.”  
As far as I can tell, I haven’t moved at all. The path and the trees are no different than they were before, not darker, not twisted and seething with the voices of the angry dead. Just where I was before, without my friends or my dog.  
Weirdly, my heart beats steadily on as if nothing has changed.  
“Gamzee?” his name has the same effect on my tongue as a mouthful of soap “Just come the fuck out and talk if you want to talk.”  
“Don’t…” begs Nepeta, but it is too late.  
He isn’t there one moment, then he is there the next, probably appearing the same way I disappeared in front of my friends’ eyes.  
Up close, I can have a good look at the guy who has done everything from try to persuade me to jump off the roof of the school to push my father down the stairs.  
I can see that I was wrong when I guessed from the rooftop that his hair was dark. It is blonde and curly, kind of like one of those classical cherubs you see painted on mansion ceilings with a sash rippling conveniently over their junk. His complexion might have once been as dark as Equius’s, but now his colours are all in tones of sepia. His skin is washed out, taut over cheekbones, the blonde of his hair reminds me of a pressed sunflower and even his dark eyes could have been filled in by dull, shiny lead. There is no depth. There is nothing behind those eyes that I cannot already see in the warped, lazy grin on his face.  
He is dressed in jeans and a hoodie over a black shirt, but nothing about his appearance screams ‘SCHIZO’ or ‘DRUGGIE’ to me. If I passed him on the street, the only reason I would look twice would be to admire his ass.  
Like I was under the bed, clutching the bat and my dog, I am so afraid that I genuinely could not move an inch if I had to run for my life. But only for a moment. Now that I am face-to-face with my tormentor, less than 10 feet away from him, he is not so scary.  
“How’s yer father?” his words are clumsy and uncertain, as if he has not needed to speak for so long that he has forgotten.  
He has that same twangy accent that I heard coming out of Jade’s mouth.  
My mouth is dry “Alive.”  
He whistles the way I would whistle for Ahab “C’mere Peta.”  
She responds by burrowing herself deeper into my back, her sharp nails scratching me as she tries to disappear into me.  
He rocks back on his heels and sighs “So, y’all ‘bout ready ta turn him the fuck over already?”  
He glances at the pendant around my neck. Quickly, I stuff it into my shirt.  
“Why the fuck w-w-would I do that?”  
“Anyone ever tell ya y’all sound super Irish when yer fixin’ ta bein’ pissed?

“A few people have.”  
Gamzee takes a step closer. Nepeta has practically climbed up my back at this point, but I manage not to stumble over her as I take a step back. Gamzee steps forward again and I step back again. He purses his lips and shakes his head as if his cat is scratching at the furniture, then we are almost nose-to-nose without a whisper of warning.  
I did not need to see that smile up this close.  
“What is it, exactly, that you got it hammered on that thick motherfuckin’ mind’a yers, the business that y’all’re thinkin’ y’all got with Eq and Nep?” up close, he smells like a wet grave and he has no breath to blow in my face, otherwise it would surely be stinging and sulphurous “S’far s’can tell, Eq got his trapped on in yer residence and Peta ain’t be nothin’ but trouble an’ nightmares fer ya. Y’all can’t be so motherfuckin’ desperate ta get laid yer tryin’ it on with a dead guy, yeah? So what’s yer issue?”  
If the devil were ever trying to mug me, I’m pretty sure this is how it would feel.  
By some miracle, my voice doesn’t shake as I reply “What’s your issue?”  
He stares at me blankly, which looks weird with that smile still in place “S’cuse me.”  
“Why are you doing this?” courage comes from the thought of my father prone in the hospital, from the thought of Equius and the others looking for me frantically wherever they have ended up “W-why are you tormentin’ me like I’ve personally insulted the honour a’ your household or somethin’? So I’m not tossin’ some poor dead kid into the jaws of a demon, how’s that crazy? How-w’s that not anythin’ but the right thing to do?”  
Gamzee’s dead eyes crawl up and down me, taking in the tousled hair, the sloppy clothes and the bags under my eyes that are deeper than his “Y’all ain’t the type ‘a person ta angle towards right ‘n wrong.”  
A horrifying possibility occurs to me “Hav-ve you been stalkin’ me?”  
“Yer not that interestin’.” he peers around me at Nepeta “We’re done here, Nep, let’s bounce.”  
“He can’t take Equius away unless you say yes.”  
For the first time, something like anger inches onto Gamzee’s face “Shut your fuckin’ mouth, ya dumb bitch. We got shit ta do.”  
Her face is pressed to the back of my neck “You have to want Equius to go away. You have to hate him. It’s not working, though, because we’ve done a lot of bad things and you just want to protect him. It’s all his fault, but you don’t care.”  
I wonder why he doesn’t simply reach around me and wrench her away, but whatever the reason is, I’m glad of it “Yeah.” I stare him square in the eyes “I don’t give a shit. You can keep tryin’, but I still won’t giv-ve up. Neither will Sol or Rose or Mituna.”  
The anger is gone as quickly as it came and has left nothing, except for the vicious, lazy smile and the flat eyes “Y’all ain’t even got a fuckin’ notion a what I’m fixin’ ta do, do ya? Why d’ya think it’s gone be torture?”  
“He wants to go.” says Nepeta “He wants us all to go together.”  
“Shut up Nepeta.  
“He didn’t know what he wanted until he knew Equius was alright, then he knew he wanted to go back to normal. Everything will be ok if we’re all together again…that’s what he said anyway.”  
He speaks like a parent clinging to their last scrap of patience “Nepeta.”  
My mind moves fast.  
So fast I barely know what I’m saying or what I’m trying to do as the words come out “Eq’s not gonna forgive you.”  
I don’t know what I’m expecting. A flicker of doubt, as fast as the anger? For him to collapse crying in my arms and beg for forgiveness? I don’t get anything at all, but I keep trying “There isn’t a ‘back to normal’ for you Gamzee. You killed two people and yourself and all three of you have been trapped here in a limbo since then, and you expect everything to work out neat as fuck just because you ask nicely?”  
“I’m not…”he starts.  
“No, you’re bein’ a total ass, like, the worst asshole on the face of the planet and you should stop right fuckin’ now before you make it worse and bring the death toll up.”  
“I’m not askin’ nicely.”  
He moves a polite distance away and shows me something that has either materialised just this moment, or that I totally missed by virtue of being distracted by the demon in my face. Rose is stretched out on the grass behind us.  
She lies as if sleeping.  
I start forward, but Nepeta prevents me from moving, mewling in my ear that I can’t touch her. She’s too strong to pull away from. I can only watch helplessly as Gamzee nudges Rose gently with his sneaker.  
“I’m not even askin’,” he grabs her by the forearm and lifts her up, pulling her over his shoulder “I’m just tellin’, and since y’all ain’t listenin’…listen, y’all think about this, an’ when y’all feel ready ta cooperate, ya can back what’s yers and I’ll take back what’s mine. Come on back here.”  
He looks once more at Nepeta “I wouldn’t get my concernin’ on ‘bout Nep, by the way. She can’t leave here, not proper-like. Not unless I say so.”  
“I’m gonna kill you,” I spit “I’m gonna find a way to kill you three times if you hurt her, four times if my father dies.”  
The demon walks into the forest. Rose hangs over his back, her hair obscuring her face.  
They are gone before the tears welling up in my eyes spill over.  
Finally, Nepeta lets of me. She retreats to the shadow of a nearby tree, waiting for me to lash out at her. She has the look of a dog that has been kicked too many times.  
“How the fuck do I get back?”  
She shrugs “I…I might have been wrong, I think. If he has Rose. I don’t think there’s a place to go back to. You’re here.”  
“You mean the others are the ones that disappeared?”  
She nods mutely “It’s dark now.”  
Glancing at the sky, I see that she is right. Shadows rolled across the forest sometime during the short conversation I had with the demon, and the moon is chasing the sun away.  
“You need to go.” she urges “I mean go. Leave the city. Go to your…your brother. Go to your friend. Just go.”  
“Are you going to help me or not?”  
She bites her lip with an unusually sharp tooth “I told you, I can’t, and he told you too. I’m not anything anymore, not unless Gamzee says I can be. Go away.”  
“Where’s Equius?”  
She shakes her head “Go away.”  
“Where’s Mituna?”  
“Go away.”  
My shoulders slump “Fuck’s sake, Nepeta, I can’t leave my father and I can’t leave Rose. I’m not going to try either, so just stop saying that bullshit. Now tell me where the other two went.”  
“Gamzee made them go away.”  
I’ve heard enough.  
Nepeta makes no effort to call me back when I walk away, even though she knows I am determined this is the last time I will ever set foot in the place where she and Equius were killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There went trouble.  
> Something extra special in the next chapter for those of us who have been beating their computer screens demanding it.  
> ERISOL COMETH


	32. All that remains of my seventeenth year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, things are going to happen.

If there is a dead woman in the middle of Sol’s road, she doesn’t bother me.  
I spend about two minutes knocking at the door and hammering the doorbell fruitlessly before I decide to hop the low fence and get into his backyard. From what I remember the last time I was here, which was about half a year ago, his window is the furthest on the right. I pick up a good-sized pebble and hurl it at his window, praying I don’t hit Mr Captor’s window. An angry parent demanding to know why his son’s alleged worst enemy is throwing rocks around his garden would really be the icing on the cake.  
I am wearing the back-pack, which went untouched in the car during the whole fiasco, and the weight of the remains of a 6ft teenager is beginning to cut into my shoulders. Equius is not in his bone, as far as I can tell. When I got back to the car I spent about ten minutes calling for him and Mituna, trying to coax him out of the pendant or the bones in the bag, whistling for Ahab and pausing every now and then to cry for Rose. Her mother isn’t likely to notice she is gone for a few more days. Tomorrow, I can call the school and say Rose got sick attending to my cold. It really doesn’t matter if they believe me.  
Tomorrow, I have decided, everything will end.  
This is part of the reason I am standing underneath Sol’s window instead of spending the night at the hospital with Pa, the way I should be.  
The curtains part after two more pebbles.  
Sol nearly falls from his room in shock “Eridan?!”  
“If you’re shouting, your father must not be home.”   
That’s relieving. Tonight is going to be awkward enough without Sol’s dad in the next room, possibly hearing everything we say.  
He shakes his head “What are you…Rose? Equius?”  
I shake my head.  
“I’m coming down.”  
The back door opens a moment later. Sol is too nervous to be self-conscious, otherwise he would probably apologise for the Bat-man T-shirt and the track-suit bottoms which are obviously his pyjamas. The numbness of shock has begun to wear off on me sufficiently that I am embarrassed to have caught Sol in his pyjamas, but I don’t say anything.  
He looks me up and down “What happened?”  
I shrug “I’m not sure I know.”  
He lets me in and guides me to the living room. Collapsing on the couch, I drop the back pack on the floor, forgetting to feel uncomfortable in the unfamiliar setting. Sol buzzes with nervous energy. He hovers in the doorway and waits for me to speak, glancing around him all the while and at the backpack, searching for Equius.  
I stare at the ceiling. My thoughts slowly resolve themselves into some workable sentences.  
“Equius and Rose are gone,” Mituna too “I don’t know where. The demon showed up and took Rose away. He says if I want her back then I’ll have to hand Eq over to him, and apparently he can’t take Eq from me unless I say he can have him. Also, Nepeta’s stuck where she died and she can’t move, so we’re getting no help from her.”  
Sol finally decides he wants to sit next to me, but on the most extreme edge of the couch “You mean…but…where did he take her?”  
I shut my eyes. His face, his smile, printed on the back of my eyelids “I don’t know Sol.”  
“What were you doing all day?”  
“I was there.”  
“Where?”  
“There. I was wherever he took me. I mean, he didn’t take me anywhere  
Sol is quiet for a moment “All day?”  
I nod “We went to the park in the early morning. When I left the park, it was nine o’clock. Do with that what you will.”  
Sol bites his lip “I thought about going there to find you guys…when you didn’t check in. But…I don’t know, I figured you were all ok.”  
“You were sulking weren’t you? Waiting to be called upon so you could dash in on a white horse.”  
Sheepish, Sol thumbs his nose “A…a little bit, maybe…sorry.”  
“Not like you could’a done anythin’.”  
Could he have?  
If Sol had burst into the clearing, would we have been able to retrieve Rose? Would we have called Equius back and defeated the demon together? Would he have been reunited with Mituna, like the mysterious reasons that kept them apart would be melted along with the problem of the demon?  
Probably not.  
Most likely, Gamzee would have walked off into the forest with a friend over each of his shoulders.  
“What should we do?”  
My head aches “I was hopin’ you’d have some suggestions.”  
Sol considers it for a moment “Well, you can spend the night here. My dad’s out of town right now, so you can take my bedroom or something and I’ll sleep in his room.”  
Something about his expression suggests Sol’s registered enough of the situation to be embarrassed at the thought of me sleeping in his bed tonight. Can’t say I’m overly thrilled at the idea of tossing and turning sleeplessly in a messy bed that smells of him, either.  
He leaps up suddenly and starts to pace “This is such bullshit! I can’t believe this stuff is just happening and we’re powerless to stop it! I mean, I literally can’t believe that’s true! There must be some way we can get Eq back! This is just…” he can no longer express his anger in English, so he slips into Japanese and lets lose a string of curses I assume would get him thwacked good if his father was around to translate.  
For a good five minutes, I let him blow off some steam. It gives me time to collect myself. I check my phone for any missed calls from the hospital who promised to contact me at the first sign of change, and from Cronus, who promised he would be checking in daily until Pa was better. A whole day vanished in the blink of an eye, following Gamzee wherever he has taken Rose.  
What could he be doing to her? I shudder to think. The only thing that gives me a modicum of comfort is remembering what Eq said about the sex drive fading with the loss of one’s body, however solid the ghost may seem. Then again there have been all kinds of stories of ghost-rapes, so my imagination is determined to take me to the worst places.   
And what if he has taken Pa with him? How could Pa sleep for a whole day? Is it possible that Gamzee removed from my father whatever it is that is left behind to create a ghost and has taken him hostage along with Rose, as some kind of extra punishment if I continue ignoring his demands?  
“Eridan.”   
I look up at Sol. My cheeks have grown wet, to my dismay. He passes me a Kleenex quickly.  
“Do you mind if a I take a shower?” now my cheeks are probably burning too “It’s kinda been a long day.”  
“You can borrow something from me, if you want. Clothes, I mean.”  
“Maybe it would be a good time to re-claim my shirt as well?” I don’t mean for it to come out venomous, but I don’t mean for it to come out as the blushing, cringing way it does either.  
Sol nods mutely, mortified beyond speech.  
He starts up the stairs.  
“Could you…could you wait outside while I’m…you know, just in case?”  
It’s a good thing his back is to me right now so I don’t have to see his face and he doesn’t have to see mine.   
Not breaking his stride, he replies “I’ll wait outside the door until you’re done.”  
We pass Mituna’s room on the way to the bathroom, labelled as such in black marker and sloppy lettering. There have been several visible attempts to clean off the words, which only smudged them and succeeded in making them even more noticeable. I wish the door were open, or that I had an excuse to look inside. The chances of Mituna being here are slim, but it would be nice if I could at least see where he lived when he was alive. Maybe it would give me some kind of clue as to how we’re going to get him going to the afterlife when Equius and Nepeta are on their way and Gamzee has been dispatched to whatever end-of-ends waits for demons.  
Sol offers to keep the backpack with him while I shower and I let him take it. Better than my original plan- to perch it on the toilet seat and hope Equius didn’t return until a towel was around me.  
“Listen, I’m going to my room. I’ll be really quick, just gonna grab some spare clothes for you….” he trails off with a faint gurgle and retreats swiftly, leaving the backpack against the wall outside the door.  
The bathroom isn’t the wreck I expected. In my mind, Sol and his father are cut from the same wood, wherein they’re both sloppy nerds that can barely drag themselves away from their gadgets long enough to eat, let alone to clean up. However, this is neat. A line drawn in duct tape halves the sink and the counter-top. On one side is a razor, a lone toothbrush in a tree, a roll of floss and a man’s cologne. One the other is Sol’s stuff, tossed haphazardly into a travel-case. They each have a separate bar of soap and a tube of toothpaste.  
Ok, so Pa and I have had our disagreements about bathroom etiquette, but this is a bit neurotic.  
Examining myself in the mirror, I decide I don’t look too bad for someone who’s been in the same clothes for almost two days (including one that slipped away from him because of a demon) and has been keeping company with the dead throughout that time.  
Also, I can’t help but notice the space next to the shower. Big enough for a bathtub, but there is only a white closet pushed into the corner, full of towels and spare sheets I’d guess.  
I glance towards the hall, both checking on the bones and for Sol.  
“Bloody Mary.”  
I wait for Equius to tell me to stop being so stupid.  
“Bloody Mary.”  
Suicidally stupid- so stupid I need a new word for it.  
“Bloody fuck, this isn’t gonna work.”  
I lose my moxy at the last second. Might be for the best anyway. I don’t want Sol’s demons coming back to haunt him because of me, although I’ve pretty much dragged him ass-backwards into this nightmare with me already.  
He returns holding the shirt that’s been missing and a pair of jeans that are going to be much too long for me. We stare at each other for a moment as I accept the change of clothes.  
“I wasn’t jerking off over it, if that’s what you’re thinking.” he says finally, his eyes trained on me, daring me to express my doubts and at the same time begging me to forgive him.  
Honestly, the thought has passed through my mind a couple of times. If Sol feels the way about me Karkat swears and Rose thinks he does, then he probably does think about me when he gets down to business. I can’t pretend I find that more flattering than I find it creepy, but I’ve got more life-threatening things to worry about  
“Nev-ver thought you were.”  
I close the door on him.  
The sound of my clothes hitting the floor has never seemed louder to my ears. I hear Sol sliding down the wall to sit and pray that he can’t hear the echoes like cannon-shots that are going off in my ears.  
Still, I don’t bother to shut the shower curtains.  
“Why did you have it?”  
“Huh?”  
“Why did you hav-ve my shirt?”  
He is silent for a moment, and sounds to be hiding his face in his hands when he does answer “I don’t know. I’m sorry, it’s easiest the most fucking creepy thing I have ever done. I even alarmed myself when I did it…I just…I don’t know.”  
After some fiddling, I manage to get the shower on (why are other peoples’ showers always so damned hard to work?) and am again, horrified by the volume of noise it produces. Now Sol has it confirmed that I am buck-ass nude in his shower and he’s free to imagine whatever he wants to about the body underneath the clothes he seemed determined to collect.  
“It’s alright. As long as you didn’t jerk off over it or work some kind of voodoo mojo on it.”  
The water is delicious. Up until this moment, I have felt filthy even though I know there is nothing visible on my skin. It feels as if there are handprints all over me, from invisible hands pressing into me and jostling me this way and that. My back stings as the water reaches the spot where Nepeta was twisting my shirt in her hands. Her nails were so long and sharp, I wouldn’t be surprised if she scratched me up.   
I wonder if I should feel like the mirror is watching me, or some kind of acute awareness that I am not safe. Honestly, I’m too busy enjoying the water and freaking out about being naked in Sol’s house alternately that there isn’t room for much else, but I swipe the water out of my eyes frequently to confirm my reflection is the only thing in the mirror, rapidly becoming blurred out under the steam from the shower.  
I close my eyes against the stream of water “Sol.”  
“Yeah?”  
“What’s wrong with you and Fef?”  
“What do you mean what’s wrong?”  
“Why are you…well you’re not exactly makin’ an effort to stay faithful to her.” only when it is out do I realise how douche-baggy that sounds “Sorry, that came out w-wrong.”  
“Yeah it did, didn’t it.”  
The silence manages to be as loud as the clothes and the shower were. I’m beginning to wish the water will melt me as well.  
“I’m not a dog, Eridan. I don’t have a master to stay faithful to, alright? Why the hell should I pine after somebody who thinks it’s ok to drop everything and move without telling the alleged love of her life or her best friend?”  
“You love her.”  
He pauses.  
“I think you love her more than me,” he says slowly “I think you still miss her like crazy. I wish I missed her, but I’m also glad that I don’t.”  
“W-what does that mean? If you’re trying to bequeath your girlfriend to me or somethin, I’m not interested in her like that. Keep her.”  
He groans “You don’t get anything, do you? You’ve got your head jammed so far up your ass all you can hear is the rumbling of your own internal gasses.”  
Not the first time I’ve heard that.  
“Use mine.”  
“W-what?”  
“Use my shampoo and conditioner. The red and blue bottles.”  
Stooping to retrieve them, I recognise the scent as the shampoo pours out. The urge to take a deep drag of the smell is as over-powering as it is creepy.  
“You said she talks to you all the time,” for some reason, I really don’t want to drop this. I want to hear him say something, but I’m not sure exactly what I want to hear “You said she won’t leave you alone.”  
“She’s guilty as fuck, obviously. She ran out on me in the same year my brother died, didn’t she? So obviously she thinks if I lose one more person it’s going to push me over the edge and I’ll be the next one in the bathtub.”  
“You don’t have a bathtub anymore.” my eyes flick to the cleared space, then to the mirror.  
“You know what I mean.” he shifts his weight on the other side of the door, scraping the bag across the floor, probably into his lap “I don’t know how to tell her I don’t- you know, I don’t need her bugging me.”  
“Did you guys make a pact about long-distance relationships or something?”  
“I don’t see the point in pursuing a relationship with a girl I didn’t like very much in the first place, especially now that she’s on the other side of the country.”  
There it is.  
Half of it at least. The other half makes me sick to think about, sick with fear and desire like nothing I’ve felt before.  
“Didn’t like her?” I repeat innocently “You tw-w-wo were perfect for each other.”  
“Cut the shit ED,” he says shortly “Just…cut it out.”  
A few moments pass in silence.  
“Still there?” I ask.  
“Where am I going to go?” he grumbles “Yeah, I’m here.”  
“I’m done.”  
Turning the water off, I towel myself off quickly and pull my borrowed clothes on quicker. Sol didn’t have the foresight or the guts to include a pair of boxers, so tug on my own pair. The shirt smells clean, not like it’s been hidden under a pillow for the past week- however long Sol has had it- and the jeans are a struggle to get into. He has much, much smaller hips than I do. His hips are thin, sinewy to go with his little butt, a popular subject of ridicule when Dave feels like remarking on people’s bodies to make himself feel better about one of his ‘albino sunburns’. My body is thicker than his, although I am shorter. I have to carry more muscle from swimming than he could ever dream of, living at his computer the way he does.  
His face burns red when I open the door. He passes me the backpack wordlessly.  
“I’m not tired.” I drag my fingers through my wet hair “Fuck it, I mean I don’t want to be alone yet, alright?”  
He stands up, but his face remains blank “What do you want me to do?”  
“I don’t know. Don’t suppose I could just kip on the floor of your room tonight?”  
Sol flounders for a moment “Ok. Fine. I’ll…I’ll just take the bed then.”  
He doesn’t know where to look. My hair is still plastered to my face, my skin flushed from the shower so that my freckles stand out a mile. In my mind, I see his crotch bulging outwards accompanied by a kazoo sound effect.  
His room is a lot cleaner than predicted. He even has books- like, actual books with words, on a big book-shelf, not the techie-manuals and gamer’s encyclopaedias to this world and that version. The shelves are heavy with books and action figures of various heroes, video game and movie, that must be left over from his childhood. The closet stands in a corner, gaping open onto a bunch of shirts and only one empty hangar. So he really did have it in his closet.  
That’s actually really creepy.  
I notice he has no mirror, but I don’t say anything about it.  
The bed is even made up. Sol crosses the room and closes the lid of his computer, then makes a half-hearted gesture at the floor.  
“If you’re sure you don’t want the bed.”  
I close the door behind me, shaking my head “I’m fine on the floor.”  
“You should probably sleep. It’s been a long day couple of days.”  
“Are you sure? Don’t you have some coding to do?” I’m not ready to sleep. The thought of slipping into the blackness where the demons and ghosts are free to torment me to their hearts’ content is terrifying.  
He bites his bottom lip “I was just…watching some anime. It wasn’t porn.”  
In a moment, I have made myself a little nest on the floor. The bones are shoved underneath the bed amongst a multitude of shoe-boxes where Sol assures me it will be safe. He leaves the light on at my request and lies above me, messing with his phone.  
The blinds that face the street are shut. Sol’s house sits on the corner, so even the east side of the house faces a street. I noticed him staring at something as if meeting a hostile gaze, but again, I didn’t remark. I don’t want to think about ghosts here.  
Not the dead type of ghosts anyway.  
“Eridan?”  
“Hm?”  
His voice trembles just a little bit “Do you really want to know why I was with Fef?”  
“Because you were mad at me.” I guess.  
“Yeah.”  
“For not liking you. Or a bit stronger than that.”  
He makes no noise of protest as I get onto the bed beside him. In fact, he lifts up a corner of the covers so I can get under with him. He leans around me to place his phone on the night-stand, then there is nothing to do but stare at each other in the muted light of the bed-side lamp.  
“I’m scared,” I draw close to him so that our legs are touching under the covers and our heads are almost on the same pillow “All the time. I’m scared that everyone’s going to die and it will be my fault, or that it’ll be Eq’s fault and mine for not gettin’ rid of him.”  
His eyes are simply dizzying this close up “It’s not anyone’s fault but the demon’s.”  
He moves to take my hand, but thinks the better of it. I chase his hand across the sheet and catch it, bringing it up to my face. After that it seems only natural to kiss. His lips are chapped and bitten, tasting of something I’m not experienced enough to identify, but that I savour anyway.  
He pulls me closer until there are no gaps between us and I can’t help but wonder how long he has been waiting for this moment, how he wondered it would play out. Surely he never imagined he’d have me in his bed.  
We part too quickly.  
Sol’s fingers are clumsy in my hair, cupping my head to his shoulder. His heart beats wildly in his chest, against my own. I wrap my arms around him and search for a purchase in his shirt, bringing him in for another kiss.   
First, second, third kiss. He can have them all if he wants.  
I tell him as much between breaths, and he tells me something that would have earned him a slap in any other circumstances.  
“I love you.”  
There’s the other half. Call me greedy, but I pretend I didn’t make it out the first time. I refuse to let him kiss me until he repeats himself, then I make him say it again and again as I tug his shirt off and his hand slides under mine.  
“I’m not very good at this.” he warns me.  
I roll onto my back and thread my arms around his neck “Just give me what you have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. The sex scene. Came and went, as promised.  
> Erisol will be a thing from now on, a proper thing with proper development.  
> Look at Eridan, though, scoring while Rose and Eq and Tuna are god only knows where enduring god only knows what. Well done on those priorities, Eridan.


	33. All that remains of the time I have to waste

Surprisingly, Sol is still beside me when I wake up.  
For a moment, my world shrinks. I forget about the ghosts, the demon and Equius. Thoughts of Sol fill me up and I’m sure I am back in my own bed, that the last night was only a product of my fevered imagination, fuelled by a desire of a depth and a strength I never could have predicted. The disappointment is both crushing and unfounded as I slowly become aware of an arm around my waist, of the unfamiliar room and of the body huddled against mine in the tangled sheets.  
It’s all I can not to burst out into hysterical laughter, when it really hits me.  
Me and Sol.  
Eridan and Sollux, arch-rivals and competitors for the affections of the fair maiden Feferi have turned their backs on her and begun a clandestine relationship behind her back. I should feel guilty. I should be beating my head against the wall, cursing myself for wasting my virginity and first kiss on revenge-sex with Fefs’ want’s-to-be-ex. I should be terrified, it occurs to me, as I spy the bone pendant over Sol’s shoulder on the nightstand, because Eq, Rose and Mituna are gone and Gamzee has made it abundantly clear he won’t leave me alone.  
But I just can’t bring myself to feel anything but contented in Sol’s arms.  
The dawn hits him in the most impressive way, making his pale skin golden, putting a fire in his hair. He sleeps with the tiniest hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth, and he holds me close.  
“I’m eighteen.” I announce quietly to the room “I turned eighteen last night. Just legal enough.”  
“Hi Eridan,” says Feferi “Just checking in.”  
My blood turns to ice. For a moment, I am completely certain I will look to the doorway and find Feferi framed there, a huge, automatic gun slung over her shoulder, a cigarettes dangling from her lips and a big pair of sunglasses crouching on her face. She’ll call me Sarah Connor and spread my insides all over Sol’s bedroom, then push my corpse out and snuggle up to him and he will be none the wiser.  
“You said your dad was sick, so I wanted to make sure he wasn’t too sick.” she continues.  
Her voice issues from my phone, which is under the bone pendant.  
As automatically as I called her at the hospital, I sit up carefully and reach around Sol “Hey Fef.”  
Somehow, she fails to translate the true meaning ‘I just slept with your boyfriend and I loved it’ and is pleased to hear my voice “Oh, there you are! I was just leaving a voicemail.”  
Horrors of horrors, Sol begins to stir. I wait in a kind of numb incredulity for him to start talking, to blow my cover and possibly try to blow me, but he just plants his face in my side and sighs, still asleep.  
Ok. Come on, Eridan, you’ve faced the undead. You can do this. You can lie like an absolute boss and stomp all over your best friend’s trust. That is totally a thing you can do.  
“So, it’s not Siobhan coming back, is it?” she remembers to put on her sombre voice this time. There have been some times when she’s asked after Pa’s illness as brightly as if she were discussing the weather.  
“Nah, he just had a spill.”  
Stirring again, Sol’s grip tightens around my waist. He might pull me back onto the bed with him if I’m not careful, so I make a half-hearted attempt to wriggle away from him. Oh wow, sudden movement is such a bad idea. Everything aches. Walking is going to be a challenge today.  
Wincing, I grope for my shirt, which is slung over the chair for Sol’s desk. I’ll feel better about this whole mess if I’m at least partially clothed while it happens.  
“What happened?”  
“He fell down the stairs.”  
She sucks a breath in past her teeth “Yeesh, that’s rough. Is he going to be ok?”  
It sends a bolt of panic through me as I realise I don’t know. What if the hospital tried to call me at some point while I was with Gamzee yesterday, or during the night while I was with Sollux? What if they’re trying to call me now because Pa still won’t wake up, his condition is worsening or he woke up with amnesia and doesn’t even remember he has a son? The only thing that keeps me springing out of the bed and sprinting to the hospital is Sol’s arm around my waist and the incessant ache in my legs. I take a couple of deep breaths, but luckily Feferi hasn’t noticed anything.  
Her tone suggests she hasn’t noticed the severity of the situation either “It’d really suck if he got hurt from falling over. Do you think his cancer has made him weaker in body and stuff?”  
“That’s generally what cancer does.”  
“Well, keep me updated. How’s Sol doing? I haven’t heard from him in a while.”  
I glance down at him “How the hell should I know? W-w-we don’t talk, do w-we?”  
She sighs “Can…can you make an exception on that law for me, please? Can you tell him to call me?”  
This isn’t the first time she has asked me, and to date I’ve never delivered her message for what I realise now are a hybrid of reasons.   
One: I liked the fact that Fef and Sol were experiencing some difficulties with their relationship, although not for the reasons I thought I did. Two, and this the new one: because I especially liked the idea that Sol was on his own, and not only because I didn’t want him to be with, but I also enjoyed, somewhere way way way at the back of my mind, knowing that I stood a better chance of getting his attention now that Fef was gone.  
God, I’m so messed up.  
“Sure, I’ll tell him.”  
“How does he seem?” I imagine her biting her lip and tugging at a lock of her hair, the way she used to when she was nervous “Like…he’s not hurting himself is he?”  
Straight to the point then “No, Fef. He hasn’t had an accident lately either.”  
“Oh. Oh, well, yeah. Hey I don’t think you’re making that up or anything, it’s just that I haven’t heard from Sol in two days.”  
Practically as long as it has been since I left the message about Pa being injured. Nice, Fef.  
Sol mutters something indistinctly and puts his face in the curve of my side. The thrill is electric and it’s all I can do not to fling the phone aside and get started on him again. But Fef’s voice in my ear serves as the cool-off and the effect is both devastating and immediate.  
“Do you think he’s cheating on me?”  
My mouth is dry “I don’t know.”  
“This is…this is serious Eridan, I need to know if you think you know.”  
I am the worst person on the face of earth. I cast a single, pleading glance at the bone pendant “Why do you think he’s cheating on you?”  
The image of her tugging on her hair has become her tearing it out “I don’t know! He’s so distant! He only talks to me if I talk to him first and all of our conversations are so strained and awkward. I mean, Eridan, I know we can survive this long-distance thing. It’s only a few more months until high-school is over then he can come up here and go to college with me, right?”  
“Uh, don’t you think he might want to be closer to home?” that comes out before I can stop it.  
“No, he told me he wants to leave,” she sounds uncertain “He doesn’t like the town very much. He says he misses me, you know?”  
When did he say that?  
Casting a suspicious glance at him, I try to remember if he ever looked sneaky or pleased with himself when he told me the way he feels about Fef. Would he lie to me, in the middle of all this mess, just to get laid? That doesn’t sound like him.  
“Ok, so stop worryin’ about it then.”  
Fef sighs “But what if he’s…what if he’s running around on me? It’s been like half a year since I left, right? Sol’s not really the kind of guy who goes around picking up chicks, but…I don’t know.”  
“Morning.” he mutters.  
I cover his mouth with my free hand and glare at him, begging for silence. He gauges the situation in about five seconds. His expression reminds me of the time Karkat (accidentally?) hit him in the balls with a tennis racket during gym.  
“Sol’s not doin’ anythin’ weirder than what he normally does, far as I can tell. He’s not flirtin’ that I can see.”  
“Should I ask Karkat?”  
“Fef, what the fuck? W-why are you snoopin’ all over him all of a sudden?”  
“I know something’s wrong.”  
“Maybe it’s his…his family?”  
Trying to ignore the way Sol sorta flinches against me, I glance towards the clock. Six-thirty in the morning. I know from experience they’ll let me in pretty much any time I try to get into the hospital. If they’re reluctant, I can just call one of the numerous oncologists I have met over the years and use them as a kind of VIP pass.  
Suddenly and violently, I have lost any kind of patience for her business “Listen, Fef, I’ve got other things to worry about. I don’t know-w if you heard me at all earlier but my dad kind of is hospitalised at the moment.”  
She sputters “Yeah I got that I was just…just never mind. Say hi to your dad for me, ok? I have to go.”  
And she’s gone.  
That was the first time I have heard her voice in almost a month, and she definitely did not remember the significance of today.  
Returning the phone to the nightstand, I lay down beside Sol and contemplate the patterns on the plaster of the ceiling.  
“Fuck.” says Sol.  
I throw an arm across his chest to let him know he isn’t allowed to leave until I get up “Yep. That was pretty fuckin’ bad, that thin’ right there.”  
He sighs noisily and blows a piece of hair from his lips “I’m sorry that…wow. I can’t actually believe that happened.”  
“W-what, that your should-be ex called you while you were waking up from a night of hot sex with her best friend?”  
He doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream, so he settles for saying “I’m gonna break up with her.”  
Somehow, it feels like he is passing me an empty tray that was full of something really delicious like cream puffs “Does it matter? She’s on the other side of the country. She could be doing the same thing.”  
Wrapping his legs up in the sheet, Sol turns on his side and gives me a frank, if confused, look “It does matter. I’m still Fef’s boyfriend.”  
“What, so it’s a legal contract?”  
I wait for him to tell me I would never understand because until last night, I had never even been kissed, not to mention that I’ve never had any kind of romantic relationship. A relationship where I didn’t imagine the other party’s reciprocal affections, at least.  
“It’s a promise,” he says slowly “I…I let her call me her boyfriend because I was sorta…promising her something. To be in that kind of situation with her. To treat her the right way and be good to her, but as a partner, not as a friend anymore.”  
He wouldn’t have been wrong if he told me I don’t understand what he’s trying to tell me. I nod sagely anyway.  
“I have to tell her I don’t want to be that for her anymore.”  
“I think she know-ws.”  
“She probably…I don’t know anything about Feferi right now, alright? She’s not even my ex, to me. I never had anything on my end that even looked like the stuff I’m supposed to feel…shit, I don’t know. I just don’t like her like that. Sure, she’s a nice person, but I really just can’t…I don’t, alright? I don’t want to be with her and I don’t have the balls to tell her that even though she’s miles away and the worst she could do to me is an angry bunch of texts until she meets somebody she likes better, who’s gonna actually be there while he’s with her…not spacing out and thinking about her best friend.”  
We are quiet for a moment.  
I long for the phone ringing, or a hoarse cackle to break the silence, or for an embarrassed clearing of the throat that would remind us we aren’t the only people in the entire world, as Sol and I clearly believe we are in this moment. At the same time, I wouldn’t mind if the rest of the world.  
He knits a hand in mine, still resting on his chest “Are you ok?”  
“Bit achy. I’ve been way worse off, though. Time I made it to the state finals in swimming? Legs wouldn’t work for two days afterwards. Couldn’t get off the fuckin’ couch without bein’ bent like an old beggar woman.”  
Sol rolls his eyes and smiles impatiently “Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?”  
“Nah.”  
Refusing to believe me, he leans over and looks at my back and shoulders “You’re bruised up back here.” and my neck “And…shit, I think I bit you.”  
“I bit you harder.” I point out a sizeable bruise close to his collar bone.  
“It’s not a competition, Eridan.”  
“It kind of is.”  
“No it’s not.”  
“I disagree.”  
“Alright, I’m gonna get dressed.”  
Immediately, I flop on top of him and pin him to the bed with my superior strength and more than slight advantage in the weight department. His struggle is brief and half-assed. Sol wraps an arm around my waist and knots his fingers in my tangled hair.   
“Moving is stupid.” I say “Too stupid to even consider. Why would you do that, Sol? How could you be so stupid?”  
He shakes his head “It’s a talent.”  
“It’s a danger to society is what it is.”  
“Happy birthday.”  
The sun is warm on my back and Sol’s heart is pumping along steadily not too far from mine. If there is going to be anything resembling a happy birthday in the slightest today, it’s happening right now.

Cronus has me hold the phone up to Pa’s ear.  
“Listen old man,” his voice is thick, but he won’t cry, because he never does “You’re sleepin’ too much. You got work. You got a child to raise, an’ he just turned into a man and nobody saw it ‘cuz you were sleepin’ on the job. The parentin’ job, y’know? You gotta be awake ‘fore I get home, otherwise I’m gonna tip you outta the bed into a cold pool of water. The old Ampora cure for too much sleep, yeah? Ceaseless harassment until the over-sleeper gets the message. It’s coming your way, old man, I swear to God it is.”  
“He heard you,” I assure Cronus as I move the phone back to my own ear “He’s leapt outta bed like he touched Jesus and doing Riverdance on top of Dr Scratch’s head.”  
The nurse barely catches himself from tittering. Dr Scratch pauses in his campaign to melt Sol, shrunk into a corner, with the sheer force of his glaring to smile at me indulgently. Scratch was one of the first friends I made in the hospital, in Pa’s in-and-out days, although he wasn’t a part of the medical team trying to cut the tumour out of Pa’s chest before it made orphans of his sons. He was just some random doctor Cronus initially suspected of being a paedophile who eventually proved himself a nice, normal guy that only cut people open for a living.  
We haven’t seen each other much since the hospital fell off the roster of our weekly appointments, but word spread when Pa arrived in the hospital again. A variety of doctors, nurses and janitorial staff he had gotten to know showed up either to pay their respects to the dying man or to interrogate his current nurse about the nature of the problem.  
Several of them have already come up with the same thing, after running some quick tests under their own steam. They’re all telling me the same thing, which is what I’m telling Cronus.  
“They say he’s got no reason to be asleep this long. Siobhan’s behaving herself and he’s not really that damaged. No internal bleeding. No sneaking disease. He’s just sleeping.”  
I wonder if he’s with Rose right now.  
Cronus gnashes his teeth “Jesus Christ. That doesn’t sound good at all.”  
“I know where the lock-box is. His life insurance and stuff. Don’t think we’ll need it, but yeah.”  
“I’m coming home in two days,” sighs Cronus “I’ll try talking to my doctors over here. Hell, I’ll even talk to the pre-meds. Hey, hey Pony! What’s the name of that broad doing the oncology course? The one that looks like John Hurt!”  
Somebody replies indistinctly in the background.  
I sincerely doubt the pre-med students will pick up anything a flock of concerned medical professionals didn’t, but I don’t tell him that. Let Cronus feel useful while he’s stuck out at his university. If all goes well, and I’m determined that it will, the problem will be solved before midnight today.  
Not that I’ve got any kind of plan.  
I’m just determined.  
“Alright Pa,” I kiss him on the cheek “I’m off. First thing we’re doing when you’re outta here is shaving you. I could make a fuckin’ coat outta the bristles on your face alone and I don’t even want to think about what your legs look. They were probably a jungle before you tripped yourself in here, knowing you.”  
Pa is still. Smudged with dark bruises and these weird shadows that will start to crawl over people’s faces if they stay in bed too long, even if they’re not conscious of it. His chest only barely moves under the blankets and I try not to think about how long it will be before that slight movement needs help from a machine to be completed. I’ve seen him plugged up in one of those breathing-whatever bastards before, and let me tell you it is nowhere near as romantic as the medical dramas would have us believe.  
Sol puts his hand on my shoulder. It occurs to me this might be the last time I see my father, and that phone call might be the last time I hear my brother’s voice.  
Today seems like a day for the last times of things, whatever that means.

It’s only eight o’clock when we leave the hospital. Sol lets me drive, although he is keeping a sharp eye on me. I’m not sure if he’s afraid I’m going to drive us into on-coming traffic or if I’m going to blind myself by bursting into tears, but either one sounds like a good idea to me right now. At the same time, I notice his eyes flick back and forth across the street, sometimes anchoring to a certain point which he will watch until it disappears over his shoulder.  
“Traffic accidents?” I suggest about the fifth time he does this, marvelling that I never noticed he did this before.  
His face is even more ashen than normal “Where are we going?”  
“We’re goin’ back to the graveyard.”  
“What for?”  
I swallow nervously “I’d never heard the name Gamzee before. What about you?”  
He shakes his head warily “It’s a weird name.”  
“Yeah, so I’m thinkin’, how-w many fuckin’ Gamzee’s can we squeeze into one little no-name city? I want to find out his full name, then I’ll look him up and find out where he lived.”  
Sol drums his fingers nervously on his leg “But if his name is so weird, then why don’t you just search it? He’ll show up.”  
The steering wheel feels a hundred times heavier under my hands, and it takes a serious physical effort on my part to make the next turn.  
“Remember how Eq talked about no one knowing about their story? I thought it was all kinds of weird, how the story didn’t get out at all. That kind of shit turns into an urban legend so fast the corpses don’t have time to roll over in their graves before they’re a staple in the town legends. Somebody either hushed it up big time or it never happened.”  
“Never happened?”  
My tongue tastes stale “Yeah. Maybe this is an elaborate fantasy I invented to give myself the courage to get out of bed in my post-Fef life…now that there’s someone who’s stuck relyin’ on me, who literally can’t run away, I gotta stand up to life now, don’t I? Bit too damned convenient that the guy nobody can stick ends up with someone w-who can’t run aw-way from him.”  
Sol’s hand meets mine on the clutch “Shut up.”  
“I’m just sayin’-”  
“Shut up.”   
He waits for the next red light, and he leans over to kiss me on the cheek.  
“I like you fine.” he says.  
The graveyard is only one turn away, and I have plenty of time and space to go back. I could retreat into the safety of Sol’s bed and hide in his arms until Cronus comes and the trouble is gone. I could run to Karkat or Dave’s house and spill my story like I feel like spilling my guts. I could search the town for Rose and I might find her, dazed and alarmed, but safe and hungry for a vengeance she has somehow found out how to exact.  
I could turn back.  
But it’s kind of already too late to turn go back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well hopefully you all enjoyed that little love-in, because it gets dark and it stays dark from here on out  
> This might be done in the next four chapters, excluding the epilogue i have planned. Might be done.


	34. All that remains of Gamzee (pretty much literally)

The rain starts before we can get out of the car.  
Under the thick, grey sheets the graveyard is a soaked horror movie set. The timing of the rain couldn’t be better either.  
Sol looks at me uncertainly “We don’t have a shovel.”  
It amazes me how quickly he has picked up on what I intend to do “I’ll wager that the caretaker’s shed has got some supplies.”  
He bites his lip “Yeah, but they’ll look. If the shed is busted into and a grave is defiled, the police are gonna be looking all over the place.”  
“Do you think so?”  
“Well, yeah.”  
“I don’t think the police are allowed to know about the grave we’re aiming for.”  
Without another word, Sol passes me a raincoat from the backseat and hops out of the car. He pulls up his hood and goes around to open the door for me while I retrieve the other item I picked up when we stopped off at my house.  
Sol was nervous as hell, but I as adamant that I wasn’t going to be running around in the same clothes for two days straight. Besides, I figured the demon wasn’t going to come after me or Sol now that he had set his terms. Sol followed me upstairs and waited in the room with me while I changed. The smell of sage lingered and made us cough. If it weren’t for the sage smell, I might have given up then. The sight of my room, even empty of Equius, was enough to make me seriously consider crawling under my bed with Sol and staying there until Cronus arrived and turfed us out. I wanted to pull Sol onto the bed with me, to attack the mounting pile of neglected homework, to start a good book. Anything but what I did, which was to get in and out fast with the things I had come for.  
“Got it?”  
I show him the second backpack “Yeah.”  
Grass squelches underfoot. I hadn’t counted on the rain when I made my plans. Mud and dirt are going to make this a nightmare- the grave will flood itself and destroy whatever progress we have made, probably dozens of times before we reach even the lid of the coffin.   
Sol slips his hand into mine “Your hand is freezing.”  
“You’re shaking.”  
He shrugs “This is gonna be fun. Scrawny bastard, malnourished bastard, trying to dig up six feet of dirt in a downpour.”  
I walk slowly to give myself a chance to read all of the inscriptions on the grave “We can do it.”  
They read the same things.  
‘Beloved father’, ‘loving wife’, ‘she will be missed’ and ‘with God’. The name blur together after a while. Some are arranged in family plots that are fenced off to make it clear where their land ends, still with blank spaces that wait to receive the newest additions to the graveyard. Sol’s stare catches on a couple tombstones as we walk, but he doesn’t break stride.  
“Don’t you think we should find out if he’s even here before we bust into the shed?”  
“That’s what I’m doing.”  
Distracted, Sol glances over his shoulder and mutters something in agreement. I wish I knew what to do in moments like these, because I’m sure there are going to be plenty in the future. More than anything, I wish he could only see what I see- only the ghosts that want me to see them, apparently. I may know I am surrounded by them, but is the difference between being told there are sharks in the water and bumping into the sharks’ rough hides as I swim.  
I open my mouth to tell him something to that effect. I wait for words to come out, then I close my mouth and swallow some rain.  
The ground grows progressively more spongy as we pass by a plot of Wallender’s and Wall’s and Peters’ and Lee’s and Li’s and Garcia’s and Sochowitz’s. There are Jones’s and Cabrera’s and Li’s absolutely everywhere. Seriously, I could not sneeze without stumbling into one of these guys. How are we supposed to tell people apart in death if they all have the same names?   
Makes me glad I have a weirdo surname like Ampora.  
“Pa had his tombstone inscription written out when I was twelve. He was going to be burnt. Half of him was gonna go into the faces and food of people he didn’t like, the other half was gonna be interred under a tombstone.”  
Sol snorts “Sounds like your dad.”  
I nod “I can’t even remember what he wanted on the stone. We’ve got it w-written dow-wn somewhere at home…not sure where…but I do remember when he told Doc Scratch, that bald guy I was talking to, he laughed so hard he had to sit down.”  
“Mituna’s burnt too. We’re Buddhist. Sorta.”  
For some reason, he always feels the need to remind people he is a semi-practicing Buddhist on the few occasions he talks about cremating Mituna, but he never responds when one of us points out he is one when he’s about to bite into a burger.   
Sol turns around so quickly he almost pulls me around with him.  
“What?” I gasp.  
He nods to a spot a couple rows deeper in than where we walk and guides me over to it.  
“They’re sorta…sorta pointing at it.”  
Before I can ask Sol who ‘they’re’ is this time, the earth begins to shiver under my feet. Like a tiny earthquake, some of the more jagged tombstones fall over with a wet plop into the earth. I can hardly believe my eyes when they glide upright again. My heart is in my throat.  
“Sol?”  
He squeezes my hand “It’s alright.”  
The tremors stop all at once. In their place, a moist, rumbling noise starts up along with the sound of something kind of woody tearing violently. An object about eight feet in length shoots into the air suddenly, and hovers above the graves as if held there by a host of invisible hands. Sol stops dead in his tracks and pulls me under an arm, drawing me into his chest. I can hardly see for staring so hard.  
The coffin spins lazily a couple of times, as if considering which direction it should go. It picks the left. Dirt slides off of the lid, showering from the rusted handles and the crevices of the woodwork.   
The coffin settles directly in our path about ten feet away, gently, carefully.  
“What the fuck?” I’m too stunned to stutter.  
Sol can’t help but lisp “They picked it up for us.” he looks all around us “Thank you. Really, I mean it. Thanks. That was really decent of you guys.”  
“Why do they want to help us?” I rasp.  
Sol shrugs “I can’t understand a word they’re saying. I think they just want to help us because…because they don’t like what Gamzee is doing?” he continues, somehow receiving encouragement from the invisible crowd “I guess they’re all stuck here because of unfinished business and they can appreciate the fact that you’re trying to help someone pass on. Two people…three people?” he looks at me in shock “You’re helping Gamzee?”  
“No! No I don’t think so! Eq talked about not wanting to leave Gamzee behind, but if it comes down to letting Eq go and not the others, I’m not gonna get hung up over Peta or Gamzee enough to let that stop me.”  
He frowns “They think you’re helping all three of them.”  
“Is…is Rose here?”  
Alarmed, Sol scans the crowd quickly “I don’t see her.”  
“Ask them.”  
“Do you know where Rose is?”  
The coffin lid creaks open.  
There she is.  
Nestled beside a jumble of bones, swept unceremoniously apart and aside into a heap of decomposing clothes and scraps of velvet that have begun to peel off of the lining of the coffin. I rush forward, forgetting entirely about the ghosts. Grabbing her by the shoulders, I wrench her upright and shake her.  
“Rose! Rose wake up! Hey, hey, hey Rose you’re drow-wnin’! Wake the fuck up right this instant young lady or you’ll be late for school!”  
Her head bobs back and forth. She is completely unconscious.  
But on the bright side, she is breathing. I press my ear to her chest to confirm her heart is still going strong and try slapping her. Sol catches my hand as I’m going in for a third slap.  
“Leave it,” he crouches beside me and prods her in the side “She must be sacked out like your dad…I don’t think she’ll be waking up until we get this problem fixed.”  
“Well what the fuck do we do with her then?” I shove the backpack into his arms “Here, stuff it.”  
He swallows, looking queasy “Do I have to?”  
“Yes. I’m not leaving her alone for a single minute. I don’t care if we have to take turns carryin’ her.”  
Stripping off my jacket, I fight Rose into it, like dressing a doll. She is still dressed in the thin T-shirt and jeans she was abducted in and I’ll be damned if she gets hypothermia as well as whatever PTSD she will inevitably walk away from this experience with. I notice her fingernails are all torn and ragged as I pull her arms through her sleeves.  
“Holy shit.”  
Of course, there are fresh scratches on the lid of the coffin.  
Sol stumbles away to the open grave and pukes lavishly.  
I can’t help but giggle “Take that, Makara.”  
Sol beckons “It is him. They really gave him to us.”  
He still acts like there is a big crowd around him. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle and breezes whisper across my arms, my shoulders, a little too frequently for me to believe it’s actually the wind instead of the hands of the spectres pawing at me. Ignoring them as best I can, I pick up the biggest bones and push them into the bag with far less care than I ever treated Equius’s bones with, who is still shoved under the backseat of the car.  
“Do you have anything we can do up her fingers with?” Rose’s arms are slung limp over my shoulders and the long-dried blood on her hands has begun to run again in the rain.  
Sol doesn’t hear me. He is too busy gawping at the tombstone.  
There’s nothing unusual that I can see about it. It’s relatively new, but unkempt. No flowers and ragged grass growing around the stone, which is dim and unpolished. Whoever buried him here seems to have forgotten the moment the dirt covered him.  
I swallow a lump in my throat.  
Gamzee Makara. No date of birth or inscription beyond that simple label. It’s kind of disappointing actually. Nothing to tell me if he was a beloved son or a caring brother, no assurances that he has passed freely into the afterlife and the waiting arms of God. Just a big hole in the ground, a coffin in the aisle and a tombstone to make sure nobody tries to dig here again.  
“Do you think they knew what he did?”  
“I don’t know.” Sol takes his glasses off and wipes the rain from the lens “Why else would they leave it so bare?”  
“Maybe they were one of those families that thought suicide was an automatic ticket to hell.”  
“Like yours?”  
“Watch it mister, both of us boys have dated another boy at one point.”  
He laughs drily “Some first date this is. Oh God Eridan look at you, you’re soaking. Get back to the car. We got what we came for, ok? I don’t want you catchin-”  
He stops in mid-sentence, suddenly tugged backwards by both arms. I can see them moving him. Not them, but their actions, as clearly as if he had wire attached to him. His mis-matched eyes bug out of his skull and he struggles, in danger of throwing himself into the hole.  
“Don’t! Let them take you!”  
He squeaks “Where?!”  
“I don’t know! They’ve helped us so far, right?”  
I start to follow him.   
My phone rings. Alright, demon, hospital, another ghost or Cronus?  
“Shit! Hang on Sol, just let them do what they want to!”  
As Sol is dragged away, I am pinned in place by Rose and the new emergency, trying to work out how to answer my phone without dropping her.  
I just about manage it “Hello?”   
Rose slips dangerously.   
Cussing, I prop her weight up against the top of Gamzee’s tombstone. She now appears to be catastrophically drunk, drooling on my back and leaning heavily on me for support. This is just great.  
“Eridan! Are you alright?”  
“John?”  
“Oh my God, where the fuck were you yesterday? I tried calling like fifteen times and your house was empty and Sol wasn’t answering his phone and Karkat was losing his shit! Also, Rose is missing!”  
“I gave her my cold!”  
“What cold?”  
“The one from hospital!”  
“I thought your dad fell down the stairs?!”  
“Yeah, no, he did but I caught a cold in hospital and she caught it while she was staying with me!”  
John groans “What the fuck are you talking about? Is she drunk? Is she ashamed of something? Jesus, just tell me you’re ok!”  
“ERIDAN!” calls Sol.  
“YOU’RE GOOD!”  
They’ve now got him about five rows away and show no signs of stopping.  
“Was that Sol? Let me talk to him!”  
Before John can hear my answer, there is an audible struggle on the other end of the phone that cuts him off.  
“Eridan?!” it’s Kanaya “Where the hell are you? What’s going on?”  
“I’m alright! I’m at the hospital with Sol and Rose.”  
“Is your father sick again?”  
“No, no he just fell down the stairs and got a concussion.”  
“Why are your teeth chattering? Are you ill? Give the phone to Rose, I need to talk to her!”  
Again, there is another muffled series of thumps and curses, then it is Dave.  
“Eridan Seamus Ampora you had better explain your shit in ten words or I swear to God I’m calling the bull-shit police on your ass. Fuck that, I’m going vigilante. I’m going to beat you to such shit we will need SHERLOCK HOLMES’ DEER-STALKER CLAD ASS ITSELF TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOUR PULP AND YOUR BULLSHIT!!”  
“Dave…are you crying?”  
“FUCK OFF SEAMUS WHERE ARE YOU?! WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD OR DYING OR ABDUCTED OR RAPED IN A DITCH OR SOMETHING!!” he takes a deep drag of breath, trying to regain his cool “I need to know the exact coordinates so I know where to fire my rocket launcher.”  
“ERIDAN!” Sol’s voice so muffled in the roar of the rain and of the static issuing from the phone as yet another scuffle for the speaker ensues, I can barely tell where he is.  
His shape has been smudged out by the dark sheets of rain.  
“Eridan. Are you alright?” this is Karkat, so dangerously calm and cool it makes me glad to be out of his reach “I need to know where you are right now.”  
“I’m fine. I’ve got a bit of a cold.”  
“Where. Are. You.”  
“The hospital, with my dad.”  
“And Rose and Sol.”  
“Yeah.”  
“And you were there last night.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Funny. We used Dave’s contacts in the hospital to check in there last night and they said they hadn’t seen you since the morning.”  
Contacts? He was in there for less than a week and he already made contacts?  
“The bald guy informed us you weren’t there.” Karkat heaves a sigh “Listen, I really, really fucking care, but I know it’s not my business to interfere with whatever the fuck you’re buried up to your neck in right now. I just want you to know you’re not allowed to get hurt or hurt anybody else.”  
Rose’s blood drips down my collar and snakes down one of the contours of my chest. Sol calls for me one more time, although he sound more harassed than anything else. Mud pours into the grave at my left, so much so that the ground underneath my feet has begun to feel unstable.  
“Pa’s not dying.”  
“Then what the fuck are you doing Eridan? What kind of shit are you pulling Rose and Sol through?”  
“Like you said. It’s none of your business.” the words are bitter on my tongue.  
“We called Feferi. We thought you might have been so damaged that you had to run away to Fef’s place.”  
“You guys have no faith in me at all do you?”  
He sighs “I don’t know what to think about you right now.”  
“Where are you guys having your little mothers’ meeting right now?”  
“John’s house.”  
“Where’s Jade?”  
“Her paperwork’s going through…it’s weird, though, the psychiatrists don’t think she needs the treatment and the doctors are losing their shit trying to find a tumour-”  
“That’s great, that really is, but you need to tell me later,” I move around the back of the grave while the mud sloshes into the hole, which has been filled up at least a tenth of the way by now “I have to go.”  
“We love you, you asshole!” that’s Dave “Sol and Rose too, so just get your asses home for dinner!”  
“Happy birthday,” adds John “Vanilla or chocolate?”  
“Chocolate.” I nudge the tombstone with my foot and it shifts a little bit in the dirt.  
“It don’t matter baby.” says John, just because he can.  
“I expect an explanation when you get home,” says Kanaya “And do not presume I will go easy on you because of the extenuating circumstances. Tell the others they’re in a lot of trouble too.”  
“Be safe.” says Karkat “And find an iron jock strap. No prizes for guessing what erogenous body part I’m going to boot you in the second I lay eyes on you.”  
“ERIDAN!”  
“Fine. Don’t call me again, please. I love you guys too.”  
Then I stash the phone in my pocket, steady my grip on Rose and kick the tombstone. It falls flat on its front and slides forward on the mud, tumbling into the grave a second later. Mud and pebbles fly up in the air like a gout of blood, some of it flecking my face and Rose’s hair.  
“Let’s go make sure Sol isn’t dead.”  
I say to Rose.  
Unsurprisingly, the track Sol has left by dragging his heels into the mud leads to Mituna’s grave.  
“Sol?” I call uncertainly.  
What am I gonna tell him? I don’t know why, but I feel like telling him Mituna is still knocking around is not smart at this point. Mituna should be the one to decide.  
I find Sol transfixed by the rain dripping down Mituna’s headstone, into the grass. He expects the grass to rip up at any minute, I know, and for another coffin to soar out of the empty space. The lid will pop open and an unconscious Mituna will tumble out, dressed in the rags of the suit they burned him in. Sol will carry him while I carry Rose and everything will be alright.  
The bone has never felt colder around my neck.  
“Sol?”  
His fists are clenched so hard his nails have drawn blood “He was here.”  
“Mituna?”  
God it’s embarrassingly easy to play innocent.  
Sol’s face is contorted with confusion and pain “How come I never saw him? He’s not here, in the cemetery. How come?”  
I’m so tempted to tell him I was asking myself that same question. I taste it, I imagine himself throwing himself into my arms for comfort or pushing me away in disgust. It’s so strange to realise I don’t know Sol deeply enough, not yet, to know how he will react, even though I have known him since we were too young to understand how controversial we could be together one day.  
“I don’t know.” I say truthfully, knowing this will be the only honest thing I will ever say to him about Mituna.  
Shifting Rose’s weight, I free up one hand and dig his nails from the pads of his palms “You’re bleeding.”  
He glances at his hands in mild surprise “I miss him so much.”  
“I know you do.”  
“Dad pretends he never happened. He did that when Mituna was still here, too.”  
The rain pours down his face, so I can’t tell if he has begun to cry.  
“I had to pay for this headstone out of my own savings,” he laughs weakly “Some of the family in Japan contributed. It scared me worse to have them talking to me again than it scared me to put it up. Dad doesn’t know. My grandmother helped me organise all of it.”  
He tries to put his head on my shoulder, but bonks into Rose’s skull instead.   
“Whoops.” I say, and we both smile thinly.  
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I leave. Who’s gonna take care of Mituna’s grave?”  
I bite my lip “Tell you what, I’ll set Pa on it. He’ll do it because I asked him too. Also, he liked Mituna a lot.” which isn’t much of a lie- Pa said he appreciated the honesty Mituna’s illness gave him, even though it was offensive honesty most of the time “He loves a good secret.”  
“This is my third biggest secret.” he counts them off on his fingers “Seeing ghosts, loving Eridan and Mituna’s tombstone. I’m just a roller-coaster, huh?”  
“What kind of flowers do you put on the grave?”  
“Flowers?”  
“C’mon Sol, you got to do that. Dead people love flowers.”  
“I just burn a stick of incense and stand around awkwardly until I have to go.”  
“Alright, Pa can do that. I warn you, he might start telling Mituna about his day. With me and Ahab and Cronus gone, he’s got an empty nest on his hands. He’ll appreciate a captive audience.”  
This strike Sol as so funny he starts to cry and plants his face against my chest, as best as he can around Rose’s cumbersome limbs.  
I hold him, shivering, fighting back tears of my own. What I wouldn’t give to hear ‘anal projection’ whispered in my ear right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eridan, grave-robbing is pretty much illegal everywhere. Then again homosexuality is illegal in a lot of places, so nuts to the law. Dig up all the bodies. Kiss all the boys. Both at once. Do what feels right.


	35. All that remains of the remains

Rose is stretched out in the back-seat.  
Her head rests in Sol’s lap. He works busily at getting her bleeding fingers wrapped up in Band-aids and gauze. He maintains he carries them out of habit, from the times early in Mituna’s illness when his motor control wasn’t at its best and he needed to be patched up pretty much constantly. Force of habit, he repeated, and he didn’t meet my eyes.  
With the shotgun seat empty again, it reminds me how much I need to worry about Equius. To trick myself into missing him a little less I have put his backpack of bones in the seat. Gamzee’s has been banished to a spot underneath Eq’s. I didn’t want to see it all, but Sol thought I was a good idea to have it plain sight so we would at least notice if it disappeared into thin air.  
The plan is currently a half-baked idea that Gamzee can somehow be black-mailed into handing over Eq and Mituna, giving up his choke-hold on Nepeta and even disappearing from our lives and after-lives forever if I have his bones. The bones are something like a physical link to this world, right? I’m assuming he wants to stay here at least long enough to fit Eq under his thumb with Nepeta, then he’ll be off, but what if I scare him into thinking I’ll be able to chase him off before he manages that.  
That’s my actual goal, anyway.  
There’s another, vaguer idea that it might be a good to empty the second bag’s contents into the widest river I can find within city limits. With the rate the rain is falling at, we might have a flood on our hands if it doesn’t let up.  
“How’s she doing?”  
“Fine.”  
“Try plugging up her nose.”  
“ED, she’s not gonna wake up.”  
“What do you reckon we should do with her? Shove her under Pa’s bed? It’ll be like a sleepover.”  
“Carry her, like you said.”  
He shuts up after that. He’s been far too quite since the graveyard. I sort of had to lead him out, since he was crying too hard to see where he was going. The ghosts weren’t feeling helpful enough to drag him backwards to the car and buckle him in. In the rear-view mirror, I can see his eyes are still swollen and red.  
“Where are we going?” I ask him.  
He looks up in shock “What do you mean?”  
“Haven’t got a clue w-w-w-w…to do next, lov-ve.”  
“Pull over then.”  
It takes me a minute to find the curb in the rain, but I manage to park us. The road is eerily empty. I’ve wondered a couple of times when there was no signs of life on the streets and roads except for us- could the demon have transported us to that weird, apparently empty world, or time-frame, or whatever, wherever he put me yesterday? Probably not.  
He might not even know we have so thoroughly defiled his grave.  
Sol eases himself around Rose and clambers into the shotgun seat. Putting Eq’s bones into his lap, he thuds his head against the headrest and stares into the steam on the windshield for a few moments.  
“I don’t know what to do. You’ve been doing all the smart things.”  
He’s tired in a way a few hours of deep sleep aren’t going to fix.   
I can think of nothing else to do but to close my hand over his and inspect the places the nails gouged “I’m making it up as I go along.”  
“You’re good at improvising.”  
Rose lies as if dead in the backseat. Her eyes do not move under the eyelids. Her chest moves very slightly as she breathes, but it is so slight that I could mistake her for a corpse if I didn’t already know her to be in the same strange coma that still has its claws in my father.  
“We’re dreaming.” says Sol “I figure this is all too convenient. Too convenient that Gamzee just happens to be in the same cemetery as Mituna even though we didn’t see him the other times we were there.”  
“We weren’t looking.”  
“Why weren’t we looking?” he sketches the outline of a skull in the mist on his window “We knew we should have been looking for a solution. Why didn’t it occur to us to take his bones the way we have Eq’s, to give ourselves some more control over the situation?”  
“’Cuz we had Rose?”  
“She should have told us. All of this…it’s too rushed. It’s too spur of the moment. It’s too unbelievable.”  
He tries not to meet my eyes, but I take him by the chin and bring him in for a kiss anyway.  
“How much of that was about me?” I mutter against his mouth.  
“Lots of it. It’s kinda too convenient that the guy who hates me suddenly likes me.”  
“Mm hmm. It is isn’t it?”  
I’d tell him I didn’t sleep with him just for the comfort factor, but I’m still not sure. I might not ever be sure if it was a well-concealed and irresistible attraction that drove me to give in to the urge, or just a desperate need to be doing something else than being afraid and on my own. Maybe that will matter later on.  
“I’ll go to prom with you, if you want.” I say.  
I had totally forgotten prom was even a thing up to this point, and I’m not even sure if the school regulations will allow for same-sex couples.   
“Sure. We should probably get rid of the demons and ghosts before we think about that kind of stuff, though.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Where to?”  
“Give me a minute to think about it.”

Thinking really isn’t my strong suit today.  
Logically, after visiting Gamzee’s grave we should have gone back to Eq’s ultimate destination, in the cubbyhole in the basement that for some reason never smelled of rot or gave the impression that there was a corpse there. Logically. Like I said, logic isn’t my strong suit. Instead, we end up at Sol’s house again, on the pretence of putting my clothes in the dryer. Also, to take a serious moment to regroup and analyse our options.  
While Sol tucks Rose into some blankets on the couch, I make for the upstairs.  
“Bathroom. Just need a quick wash.” I lie.  
I can tell he feels more than a little bit awkward about being back at the place where he popped my cherry so soon after it happened, with an unconscious friend no less. What I can’t decide is whether or not I care.  
When I pass the bathroom, my footsteps grow furtive. Just to be extra sure I close the door loudly, then slip into Mituna’s room. Luckily, the door is not locked. I was afraid it might be after hearing about how Mituna’s headstone was erected, but no. However this room has clearly gone untouched for a long time.  
At one point it was papered with post-it notes with various notes that have slipped from the walls and surfaces over time. They are little reminders to do various things, such as which shoe to put on which foot and where he has left some personal effects. The handwriting is the same as the lettering on the door, scratchy and sloppy. Some are even written in misshapen Japanese characters I can’t begin to decipher. The penmanship suggests he agonised over the shape and the strokes before he put them up.  
Along with a carpet of the dingy yellow post-its, dust is thick on the floor. The blinds are drawn. The desk looks like it was left the way Mituna left it, with the papers strewn haphazardly and eraser shavings everywhere. A couple of books fell off the sides and have bent into the shape they fell in. Weirdly, his bed is neatly made, although the sheets probably haven’t been changed since he died.  
“Mituna?”  
Even though I can hear Sol thumping about downstairs, I can’t help but keep my voice low.  
“Are you here?”  
Perching in his desk chair, I push it back from the desk and wince at the shrill squeak of protest from the wheels. They carve tracks in the dust that hasn’t been disturbed for over a year.  
“Wish you still had that bathtub around. That’d be really useful, I bet. The object tying you to this realm and what not…actually that’s probably Sol, and I don’t think I’ll be getting rid of him anytime soon.”  
Talking to myself this way, I can almost imagine Mituna prone in his bed the way my father is right now. I made something of an art out of talking to people on their sickbed when I was younger. Plenty of time to prefect my craft, after all.  
Glancing towards the door, I continue “We have Gamzee’s bones. I think the people at the cemetery must really love you, you know, because they helped us out without even being asked. Either that or they know this is gonna get you outta their hair and they all can’t wait.”  
Acting on a sudden impulse, I get down on my knees and peer under his bed. I start to paw through the mess of shoeboxes and folders pushed under here. Most of them are material from AP classes, which makes sense. He wouldn’t have been able to do his classes after the accident basically pushed his mind over the edge it was already teetering on.  
“No, I don’t know what I’m looking for either. Whatever’s under here, I suppose. I know you haven’t got your bones crammed under here or whatever, but, hey, can you fault me for trying?”  
I seem to be working towards the back of the wall. The more I pick up and examine, the more I understand I really didn’t know Mituna at all. I didn’t know the guy before his accident and I didn’t know the guy after it either. He’s a total stranger to me and yet he’s determined to help…in his own way, at least.  
What have I done to deserve that kindness? This would be a really great time for an interjection from my pendant, but it remains silent.  
I straighten up, having reached the back of the wall. No bones. No tell-all diary. Perhaps I should be disappointed. Instead, I’m already making plans to search again and to keep searching until I find something Mituna wrote before his accident. I want him talking to me again, even if it is only through some words on a page.  
Sol might have something of his.  
“Well, since you’re refusing to be helpful here do you have any suggestions where I might go next? I need to find Equius. I need to find him before I go back to the bridge and face down the demon…I can’t risk letting Gamzee take them. I mean, cruel as it sounds, I don’t really care what happens to Nepeta. She’s pissing me off, the way she’s refusing to help us. I’m only helping her because she’s Eq’s friend.”  
Now that I think about it that really isn’t true. Some small measure of compassion in me won’t let me forget the way she shrunk into my back at the graveyard and clung to me like I was the last life-boat off the Titanic.  
“I do want my dog back, though. Well, not back, I just want to send her off somewhere nice.”  
It occurs to me then that I have to go home.  
I absolutely have to, no questions asked, no fake, bullshitty premonitions to use as an excuse to stay away this time.  
“I’m off, Mituna. Sorry about the intrusion, in my boxers and everything.”  
I close the door on the empty room. If I have my way, it won’t be this empty or this messy for too much longer.

I can tell Sol isn’t too happy about letting me go home again. He refuses to go completely into the house, opting to linger around the doorstep with Rose on his back. Hopefully, the neighbours won’t suspect him of being some kind of pervert, what with the unconscious girl on him while he hangs around my house. Then again the neighbours were everything but helpful when the ambulance tore down the street and they did nothing but stare and update their Facebook statuses (‘cancer patient next door being taken away in ambulance-LOL’ I imagine). Unless Sol starts stripping Rose off in the front yard, I doubt they’d do anything remotely resembling helpful.  
He waits patiently while I go around the back and dig up Ahab’s shallow grave with a shovel, still stained from the time I buried her. This time the work is not nearly as strenuous. The shovel passes through the dirt like a knife through butter, even though the rain is still falling and the ground should have the consistency of honey by now.  
Ahab’s body has already begun to decompose. I do the next bit as quickly as possible, in one breath. Reaching into the sheet, I grope around in the various, squishy pieces until I find a hard sliver of bone and tug it out. Then I scrape off the pieces of gristle and general viscera clinging stubbornly to the bone with a stick and nudge it back into the grave. I fill in the grave and pat the dirt flat over it, hoping the rain will do something to wash away the signs of a disturbance.  
The bone gets a good wash in the bathtub with soap and a little bit of stronger stuff, the kind of strong-smelling substances Pa sprays on glass surfaces to clean them. I’ve always had this belief that anything that makes my eyes water just by its scent is going to be good at getting dirt up, and this time it proves to be true. I take a moment to wash my hands a couple of times. Until they’re raw and red and the soap seeps into the little tears in my skin near the bottoms of my nails and stings.  
It’s going to take a while to get the smell of rotting meat out of my nostrils.  
I trudge back out to the car and throw myself in the shotgun. Sol comes back and stashes Rose in the backseat, and gets in beside me.  
“Eridan?”  
I close my eyes “Present and accounted for, teacher.”  
I hear him groan. His hand closes over mine “What’s that in your pocket?”  
“Boner.”  
“What?”  
Extracting the bone, now double-wrapped in two dishcloths I intend to throw away at my earliest possible convenience, I pass it over to him “Dog bone. Watch out, it’s still fresh. Gamzee was quite nice to skin the dog for me.”  
Sol swallows with difficulty “Huh. So…so she really is dead?”  
“Yep.”  
“I’m so sorry, Eridan, I really am.”  
He puts it back in my lap after a moment.  
The rain drums on the windows. A gust of wind jolts the car every now and then.  
“What now?”  
“The way I figure it…” I bite my lip “We’ve got a car full of bones. We can either pull into the police station and demand to know the exact goddamned details of the case and probably get arrested for defiling a grave…two, but I don’t think they’ll count Eq’s…or we can…we can…I don’t fucking know.”  
“Why did you never go to the police?”  
This stumps me for a minute.  
“Because there was a fucking ghost attached to the bones.”  
Sol ponders this “They didn’t have to know that. You could have just gone to the police about the bones and gotten all the details on the case. Ok, so it’s likely they would have fed you some cover story because this whole thing reeks of a cover-up but knowing your dad…he would have seen through their shit and gotten down to the real thing, right? I mean, come the fuck on. Gamzee’s family would so be out here if they knew there were bones in the walls. Covering it up again, whatever. If there’s any of them still alive, they’d be out here like a shot if they knew the son of the family had hid his dead friend’s bones in the wall…meanwhile, you would have been flipping your shit over the ghost in the background, I guess…yeah. Win-win for everybody because Eq’s family would have gotten to see his body getting a proper burial and you would have helped him out?”  
Sol’s next words die in his throat as he catches the expression on my face. He withers with an apologetic grin.  
“Guess you weren’t…weren’t thinking clearly. Sorry. It’s just that I’m kind of used to this shit.”  
I roll my eyes “Not used to it enough to do the thinking for me, huh?”  
He furrows his brow “Hey I only just thought about it, alright?  
“Obviously neither of us are that smart.”  
He shakes his head “Actually, I think this is kind of something I would rather deal with in private. You know, without the prying eyes of the law enforcement.”  
We sit in silence for a couple of minutes.  
“So, back to the park?” he asks.  
“Back to the park.”  
Sol reaches under his seat and situates Eq’s bag of bones in his lap.


	36. All that remains to do is to murder the murderer

Back to the park.  
To do what?   
Save the world, get the boy and the other two I care a little less about, possibly retrieving whatever it is of my father’s and Rose’s that Gamzee has taken, and my dog too, if I’m extra lucky.   
That half-baked idea of talking Gamzee off the ledge is still there. Every time I try to conceive something more informed, I realise I literally have no idea what to do and any fresh hopes are washed away as if by the rain still coursing outside the car. Other than the talking thingie, I’ve got nothing else going for me, unless I can think of something exceptionally intelligent to do with these bones. The ghosts had to have given them to me for a reason. They know something. They know what I’m trying to do and they must know I’m going to need his remains to send him on his way. Either that, or they thought I needed another bag of bones to stuff under my bed to make my life more symmetrical.  
The only good thing about this general cluster-fuck of terror is having Sol at my side.  
Which is not to say that he has remained calm, like the pillar of strength one of us needs to be. I can tell from the paleness of his face and the tightness of his jaw that he is just as scared as I am. If not more. I think about closing my hand over his and offering some words of comfort.  
Instead, I turn around in my seat and shake Rose half-heartedly by the leg.  
“Could you carry her? I’ll take the bones.”  
He nods wordlessly.  
In a moment, we are both outside the car. Eq’s bones are on my back and Gamzee’s dangle from a hand, the bottom of the backpack scraping the forest floor. Rose is as limp and cooperative as she was before.  
“If something goes wrong, you should run.”  
Sol gives me a sharp look “Something’s already gone wrong. This whole thing has been one wrong thing after another.”  
“You know what I mean.”  
There’s something a little bit possessive about the way he takes my hand “I’m not going to run.”  
Resisting the urge to shrug him off, I manage a wan smile “Fine then, but don’t blame me if you end up the way Rose is. I’m not sure that I can carry two of you. Might have to rock-paper-scissors ov-ver which unconscious corpse I haul back w-with me.”  
With that, I spin on my heel and march into the forest. Sol keeps in stride beside me, although he struggles visibly with Rose’s weight on him. The day is still quite young. That fresh, damp feeling still hangs on the trees. Dew soaks through my shoes as we walk through the grass growing over the path. And of course, there is the incessant rain. My jacket seems a poor defence against the chill of the rain. Every now and then, I can’t help but shiver. I’m trying not to let Sol see that I’m shivering. He’s acting so weirdly affectionate at the moment he might call the whole thing off if he thinks I’m about to get a cold. I probably should have talked to Dave about the fall-out of this ‘sex’ thing before I went ahead and did it, but hey, assuming I survive today, I’m sure he’ll be delighted to tell me what I did wrong.  
The bridge is far less deep into the forest than I remembered. In my mind, I had it pegged as being deep into the interior of the forest, buried under layer upon layer of shadow. In truth, the only shadows are what the rain naturally cast. It only takes us about fifteen minutes to get where we want to be. We hear the roar of what was a stream a few short hours ago well before that.  
“The fuck is that?” asks Sol “I thought you said it was just a stream.”  
“Rain, you fuck wit. Lots of it.” I gesture at the sky with my free hand “Probably flooded the place.”  
He furrows his brow “We shouldn’t be near it if it’s flooded. Flash floods and stuff like that.”  
I roll my eyes “Flash floods are going to be the least of our worries if we don’t do this today.”  
“Alright, alright, but if the water level starts climbing really really fast promise me you’ll climb a tree.”  
“What good will that do?”  
“It’ll get you out of the way of the water.”  
“The trees will just get swept away too, genius.”  
“Well clinging to a tree is a better place to be than being swept around in all that detritus, right?”  
“Nah, the tree is a bit of detritus.”  
The stream is in sight now. It has almost flooded. The stones which were once visible under the clear surfaces have been lost in an opaque, junk-clogged mess churning just barely within the banks of the riverbed. The ground around it is marshy and water-logged.  
“Look at that shit,” says Sol sourly “That’s going to sweep us away. You and me might be fine, but what about Rose? If she gets pushed off me she can’t swim to safety.”  
“Maybe she’ll get stuck on one of your trees and magically be safe from harm.”  
“I’m serious Eridan, they say it’s the best thing to do.”  
“Where are you hearing this from?”  
“My dad’s friend. He lived in Arizona and they have flashfloods out there a lot.”  
“In the frigging desert? Do they even have trees out there?”  
“Just climb a tree, alright!”  
“Alright, Jesus!”  
“I figger y’all are doomed, trees or not.”  
Gamzee is hugging the shadows underneath a tree a couple yards to our left. He has a hand in his pocket, and is inspecting the nails of the other with a passing interest. At first I think he’s just trying to pull off a cool, unaffected vibe like a badass boss villain. But looking closer, I can see he’s not actually looking at anything. The fingers of his left hand have disappeared up to the first knuckle.  
I’m not sure if the great swoop of joy I feel is justified.  
Something’s happening to him. If that finishes happening to him before I can get Eq, Pa, Rose and Mituna back, then I’m simply not going to get the back. I’ll lose them to the same nothingness that is eating Gamzee’s hand in front of my eyes. What must the other hand in his pocket look like, I wonder?  
Sol blanches.  
Gamzee meets his eyes with a lazy, sleepy sort of confidence “You’re him that’s been eyeballin’ ghosts since he were a child, right? I know the chica schmoozin’ in front ‘a yer house.”  
He swallows hard “The woman….the woman with the crushed head?”  
“She in a purple pantsuit, gettin’ its rip on all over the collar an’ the back, all nasty all over the back with tyre marks?”  
Bewildered, Sol nods “How do you know her?”  
He shrugs “When you’re dead, ya know evr’one else that’s fixin’ ta that side a’ the veil.”  
Gamzee faces me, suddenly disinterested in Sol “What’s the deal, motherfucker? Y’all tryin’ ta’ get rid a’ him? I said I’d take more if you didn’t come back ready ta give up what y’all took.”  
“I’ve got something you might be interested in.”  
I hold up the backpack and give his bones a good, heavy shake.  
He squints at them. It takes a moment for it to click in his head. When it does, the sheer fear that slides across his face in an instant before it gives way to rage….out of everything that has happened so far, that is what scares me the most.  
The churning stream, fast becoming a river. The backpack held out in the direction of the water. Still, there’s a dark, deep satisfaction knowing that I can scare him by threatening with whatever I am threatening him with.   
“Yer gonna lose them all.” says Gamzee “If y’all let that there package a’ dust go, y’all’re gonna lose yer father an’ yer ghost bitch and his little whore and…” he stops, letting his eyes settle on Sol for a second “And all the rest. All the rest ‘a them. They all gone, if you let me go.”  
“I’m not going to let you go.”  
Not yet, I’m thinking, not until I’ve scared you shitless.  
“Y’all ain’t got nothing ‘ta set things straight, yeah?” this is the closest I’ve ever seen Gamzee to being anything but calm, collected and cruel “Jus’ give it up. Give him up an’ this all goes away an’ y’all get what you really need back.”  
“Why do you need my permission?”  
“Y’all wouldn’t understand it.”  
“I think I should understand what’s going on.”  
Sol mutters out of the corner of his mouth “Why did he look at me?”  
I shake my head at him “Seriously, what’s your deal? W-what’s the need?”  
Sol grabs me by the arm and pulls me back. Cursing at him, I plant my feet in the marshy ground, refusing to be drawn back again.  
“What are you doing?!”  
He’s about to reply when a massive splash sounds and we are both sprayed by water. The soil has fallen away where I stood only moments before. The ground is washed away and tugged under faster than I could have thought possible. I let him drag me back all the way to the treeline. Gamzee disappears around the trunk of a tree, but he strolls back into our line of sight, heedless of the crumbling bank.   
“Shit, sorry. Sorry.”   
He thumps me on the back and nearly drops Rose “It’s alright.”  
“Can we jus’ get this over an’ done with ‘fore we end up with three more dead people ‘round here?”  
So Rose isn’t gone. Neither is Pa.  
A floodgate opens within me. The catharsis is enough to make my legs weak.  
Gamzee glances towards the riverbank. Giant chunks are falling now, like a sand-castle being pounded away in waves. The bridge is barely visible in the rain. It glistens with rain, and the water is high enough to scrape the belly of it now. This storm might wash it away.  
The storm will wash away this whole place if we’re lucky.  
“Where’s Nepeta?” I ask.  
Gamzee glances over her shoulder “Why? Whaddya care?”  
“I want to see her before we go any further.”  
“I don’t know why y’all think y’all got the time for this shit.”  
Nepeta peers around the trunk of a tree opposite Gamzee. She seems to be trying to make her face as blank as it was before, but it keeps twitching, like she’s either trying not to smile or cry.  
“Hi Eridan.” she mutters.  
“Don’t talk to him.” snaps Gamzee.  
She doesn’t meet his eyes “Shut up Gamzee.”  
He doesn’t even flinch.  
We’re too far from the riverbank. Who knows what kind of ghostly trick he could use to stop me, if I try to get his bones in the river from this distance? If Mituna’s friends and Gamzee’s enemies in the graveyard can lift a coffin out of the ground no sweat, then he should be able to stop the backpack in mid-air quite easily.  
At the rate that riverbank is falling away, the water might come over to me in a minute.   
“Have you got your necklace?” asks Nepeta.  
My hand automatically goes to the pendant, hidden under my shirt.  
She bites her lip, the blankness falling away “Hold onto it.”  
“Don’t talk to him.”  
“Shut up Gamzee,” she repeats wearily “I don’t want to die again. Don’t forget me.”  
“Don’t talk to him.”  
“Throw him in the water. The other side isn’t too bad.”  
She leans down and rolls up the leg of her ragged jeans, showing me her kneecap is gone. Somehow she can still stand and the rest of her leg is still attached, but there is empty space where the knee should be. As if reminded of his own problem, Gamzee glances at his hand, then pulls the other one out of his pocket and flaps a half-empty sleeve.   
“Yeah it is.” he retorts.”  
“Shut up Gamzee.”  
“Why don’t you both shut the fuck up?” shouts Sol “Stop treating this like a game or some fucking therapy session! This is real! This is serious!”  
They ignore his little out-burst.  
“Why does he know me?” demands Sol, his eyes pleading “Eridan, what the fuck is going on? Is this…is this about Mituna?”  
“Not now Sol. Please, not now.”  
I know I should be wounded by the look he gives me now; how badly I have just wounded him. I just can’t bring myself to care right now. I hope to God I’ll care later, but for now I kind of want to smack him for hauling his own problems into this shit-fit.  
Another piece of the riverbank splashes into the water and zooms away. We’re losing the ground to stand on. In a moment, the bridge will be gone.  
“How do I get him back?”  
Nepeta shrugs “The hell if I know. All I know is that he wants things back to normal and-”  
“I know that I know all that! I mean, how do I get Eq back?!”  
“Just hang onto his bones! Get rid of Gamzee and you’ve got no one holding him down!”  
“That ain’t the way it works!”  
“Eridan.” says Sol softly “Is Mituna still hanging around here?”  
I drop Gamzee’s bag on the floor, unzip the front pocket and tug out the first bone I get my hands on. If I had paid enough attention to the science classes on human anatomy, I might be able to identify the long shaft of white-yellow bone as a femur or whatever. Looks kind of like a boomerang.   
“Stay put.” I say to Sol “Hang onto Rose.”  
I walk towards the river. My heart is in my mouth. Gamzee reaches out for me in confusion, wondering what I’m aiming to do. He wants to think I’m giving up to him, but the bone? What do I want with the bone? His hand comes towards me and stops inches short of me. From the look on his face, I can tell he thought he was going to be able to touch me. I sort of expected him to be able to as well, but it doesn’t come as a surprise to me when his hand, now worked down to the second knuckles, his thumb completely gone, paws in uselessly in the empty air.   
As I pass between the ghosts, Nepeta reaches out and pokes me in the shoulder, muttering in shock that she can still touch me.  
I lift the bone over my head, pausing at the ragged edge of the riverbank. Water pools around my shoes. Rain fills my eyes and the sound, my ears.  
“Don’t.” whispers Gamzee.  
I let the bone fall into the water. It is gone so fast I wonder for a moment if it missed the water entirely.  
Behind me, Gamzee muffles a cry in his elbow. He falls to one knee, clutching at his side with the arm that still has a bit of hand left on it. Nepeta regards him with a repulsed kind of curiosity and prods the deflated jean sleeve where his right sleeve was a moment ago.  
“Cool.” she smiles for the first time, making it look as if she’s about to devour him.  
That’s all I need.  
I dash back to Sol and grab the backpack, dropping Eq’s at his feet.  
“Stay right there.”  
His face is colourless “You’re killing him.”  
“He’s already dead.”  
The next thing to go into the water is definitely a rib. The thing after that is a vertebrae, the same shape as the first of Eq’s bones I found in my backpack. Then a piece of his skull, which has been shattered since I plucked it from his coffin.  
I’m about to toss what looks like a finger bone, wondering if he even needs the help to disappear since all of his fingers are gone anyway, then I hear a ragged, wet cough behind me.  
“Rose!” cries Sol.  
I turn around. He kneels and puts her carefully on the ground, pressing her shoulders flat as she tries to sit up.  
“Can you hear me?”  
She groans, putting a hand to her forehead “You wouldn’t….believe the dream….the dream I just had.”  
“Cool.” repeats Nepeta.  
I’m not sure if it’s the rain or if tears are sliding down my chin. At any moment, I know my phone will ring and Doc Scratch will be elated and bewildered, telling me my father is mysteriously awake and demanding to know if Siobhan will reappear, and also, shouldn’t his sons be wailing at his sickbed right now?  
“Believe me, it’s at the top of my list.” I murmur to myself.  
“Hey, you’re really hurting him.” says Nepeta brightly “How much longer are you gonna drag this out?”  
I take a couple of steps back, feeling the ground underneath me sag “One bone at a time until I’ve got Eq here.”  
“What about Mituna?”  
“What about Mituna?!” shrieks Sol “Somebody use plain goddamned English or Japanese and tell me what’s going on with my brother! Is he dead or-”  
Rose clamps a hand over his mouth “Every word is an ice-pick in my skull, dear.” her head falls to the side.  
Rose gives me a critical look. She has no idea what’s going on, but she has probably figured we’re at the climax of the struggle right now.   
“Yer…yer really hurtin’ me.” these are the first coherent words Gamzee has managed since I dropped the first bone.  
He’s like a sack now, his clothes swamping him. I honestly can’t tell what’s there and what’s not anymore. He hides his face under his hood, holding the fabric in his teeth because he no longer as anything to hold the hood down with.   
“You killed two people, attacked two of my friends, threw my father down the stairs and skinned my dog. I’d be a little peeved if I didn’t get the chance to torture you before this is over.”  
A thunderous bark of agreement bounces off the trees. Ahab barrels out of the tree and hurls herself at my legs. Good thing she passes straight through me, otherwise she would have knocked me into the river and that would have been the end of Eridan Ampora.  
In an ecstasy of joy, Ahab darts off to Sol and Rose before I can even pet her and runs a circle around them, then sniffs Nepeta with great interest.  
“Aw, how cute is she?” Nepeta scratches her under the chin “Hello sweetheart, what’s your name? Normally I hate dogs, because cats are totally the superior species, but aren’t you just the sweetest thing wearing fur?”  
Ahab’s tongue lolls out of her mouth and slaps Nepeta across the cheek.  
“I want to know what’s going on with my brother.”  
“He thinks ‘anal projection’ is a hilarious thing to say.” offers Rose, gritting her teeth “Jesus Christ, what is that noise? Where’s all this rain coming from?”  
That noise is something I can’t identify either. Were it coming out of a living mouth I would have called it a death rattle or a keen of grief, but out of a dead mouth? God only knows. It sounds like a noise human ears shouldn’t be able to detect, only faintly, in their nightmares. The kind of noise that sets dogs barking for no reason in the middle of the night and sends shivers up your spine even though technically you haven’t heard it.  
It brings tears to my eyes.  
I look at the piece of him in my hand-a random fragment I have no idea how to name.   
Even with him crying behind me, I can’t deny that I really, really want to cause him this kind of pain. I want him to hurt and cry and regret ever being born.   
I want Equius back.  
“HERE I AM!” cries a familiar, nasal voice.  
Mituna bursts into the clearing in a haze of fog and spreads his arms to the rain.  
“Now I have no fucking idea where I just was, but man! It feels great to be back!”  
“MITUNA?”  
Mituna actually screeches with delight “Hey, little bro! You can see me! Fucking finally!”  
Sol leaps over Rose and tackles him into the mud. They roll around shouting at each other in Japanese, exchanging slaps that are both good-natured and incredibly pissed off. While the Captor reunion literally rolls past him, Gamzee turns his face to me. What’s left of it.  
Most of him is gone by now. The pack is over half empty and I have just dropped his hip-bones (pelvis?) into the water. What remains are mere fragments. The dust I’ll have to shake the bag upside down to get out.  
“Stop.”   
It’s not begging. There is little or no fear. He’s just suggesting it politely at this point.  
“You nev-ver stopped. When you died, as I understand it you could hav-ve had a second chance. Turned it all around, yeah? Made nice with your v-victims and soared on to heaven? But you didn’t even try. You don’t deserve my mercy or my pity. Just disgust.”  
He makes a noise between a whimper and a snarl “You ain’t got a clue what it was to be me. When I died, I could think with just one voice. Didn’t even know which one ‘a them I was ‘til I put on that pretty necklace, then it was all straight and neat in my head. How could I celebrate that? In a coffin, in a whole yard ‘a ‘em, with sad old fucks who didn’t know themselves from the dirt.”  
“Boo fuckin’ hoo. You can’t just kill people ‘cus your daddy didn’t love you or whatever.”  
“He was a shcizo.” offers Nepeta, still cooing over the dog “We loved him anyway. Then he snapped and killed two of us and hung himself, so the fun was kind of over. Hey, what’s this dog’s name? I don’t think I ever caught it.”  
Gamzee lets out a wet cough “Yer jus’ as bad as me if y’all let me go.”  
I scoff “The hell I am.”  
He smiles at me, although most of his teeth are gone by now “Nah, motherfucker. One life and ten lives…ain’t no difference. Once y’all snuff out one brother, don’t matter how many other brothers y’all finish up. Yer soul’s dirty. Dirty and guilty and everyone knows it.”  
I hold the bag up over the river “Whatever. I doubt I’ll end up hanging myself to dodge the guilt of finishing you off.”  
I let him hang over the grey water, staring into his dead eyes. He stares back at me. Sometimes his eyes seem to have a spark of life or fear in them, extinguished long ago. Then the spark is swallowed up by the blackness of his eyes and I know I can’t feel guilt for burying something that was dead in the first place.  
The bag falls from my hand.  
An instant later, another hand catches the handle. A body fills the space behind me. Before I can even cry out in shock, there is a blow to the back of my head.  
“Just what the heck do you think you’re doing?” Equius smacks me upside the head again “This is murder! Granted, the murder of dead murderers, but for God’s sake Eridan! What are you thinking?”  
Sol’s got nothing on the hug I give him. He has to bend to support my weight and almost falls on the ground, and just barely manages to stagger away from the river with me practically hanging off his neck.  
“You’re strangling me,” he rasps “Get off.”  
Instead, I tighten my grasp on him and bury my head in his shoulder, squeezing him so hard he would be breathless if he needed breath.   
“I thought you were dead!”  
“I am dead.”  
“No! I mean I thought you were never coming back!”  
He puts a hand in the small of my back to support me “Well I’m here, aren’t I? I have no idea where I just was, but I never imagined I’d come back to find you attempting murder.”  
“You don’t know Eridan very well, then.” mutters Rose, shielding her eyes against the weak sun with her hand.  
“Fuckin’ yay. Here’s Eq. Day’s saved.” mutters Gamzee.  
He slumps against a tree trunk, his face still concealed. A puppet that has lost its strings, and the limbs they would have moved.  
Eq tosses the pack over to Rose, who catches it automatically “Don’t let Eridan have this.”  
She slides the bag under her head and settles prone on the ground “No worries.”  
I can’t help but feel a little indignant “Sorry, but didn’t I just save you?”  
He pries me off of him with some difficulty “Not in the way I would have preferred. When…when did Sollux start being able to see Mituna?”  
Sol and Mituna have stopped rolling all over the forest by now, which was a good thing because they were getting dangerously close to the river. They’re beside themselves with joy. Sol pats Mituna’s face and squishes his cheeks together, testing the solidity of his brother. His red eye looks even stranger when it’s bloodshot and teary.  
“Just now, I think.” I grab Eq’s hand “Where are you going?”  
He sighs “To talk to Gamzee.”  
“Look at the dog, Eq! Isn’t she sweet?” trills Nepeta.  
Ahab is having the time of her life over there. I’d feel a pang of jealousy over this, but right now I’m too messed up to decide if I feel anything other a toxic mix of numb surprise and anger. I cling onto Eq as he goes over to Gamzee.  
He kneels beside the deflated lump of clothes and reaches carefully into the cavern where the face would be. Cupping the side of Gamzee’s sort-of face, he tilts it up to face him.  
They stare at each other for a long moment, one I should not be intruding on.  
“Look at you,” says Eq softly “What have you done to yourself?”  
“Shit that needed doing. Fuck off.”  
Gamzee nearly sounds like he did before, except a lot more growly. I’m far too close to him for my own comfort and I find myself edging behind Eq for safety.  
Eq tries to pull the hood off, but Gamzee flinches away, craning his neck in the other direction.  
“Leave it!” he barks.  
“Fine….so what now. What’s the next step in your master plan? I’m actually quite curious as to how you plan to get yourself out of this situation. You have lost your body. Nepeta doesn’t seem to be under whatever spell you had on her before, and I am back. You couldn’t control us, Gamzee. As far as I am aware, that’s what you wanted to do, isn’t it? To control us?”  
“Nah. I jus’ wanted to get the band back together, so ta’ speak. I wanna go, Eq, but not where yer little friend’s gone send me if he gets his wicked way.”  
“He won’t,” Eq assures him “He won’t.”  
“Pardon me, but I’m not the villain here!”  
They ignore me.  
“Why did you kill us?” asks Eq slowly “You didn’t hate us, did you?”  
Gamzee pauses “I did. I hated y’all for bein’ as right in yer own minds as y’all could be with all them dramas and crushes and that shit…hated y’all ‘cuz I know y’all were gone be able to do whatever the fuck y’all wanted, and I was gone have to stay home near the father an’ the motherfucking brother in case I lost my shit and needed …well they ain’t the supportin’ type, are they? Ya know what I mean.”  
Eq rolls his eyes “Barely. You’re as cryptic as ever.”  
“I ain’t cryptic. Y’all jus’ ain’t nowhere near the same page as me.”  
“So you hated us. You killed two of us. What are you going to do now?”  
If he still had shoulders, he might shrug helplessly “Surrender, I guess. Die with as much ‘a ungrace as I can muster.”  
“That’s not a word.”  
“Jus’ ‘cus it ain’t in the dictionary don’t mean…” he stops midsentence, lurching forward suddenly.  
For a terrifying moment I think he’s about to bite out Eq’s throat, but instead he pushes his face into Eq’s shoulder, where I put mine when I hugged Eq.  
Eq cradles him, pulling him close. This time I do back up.   
I nearly screech in surprise as Gamzee passes an arm around Eq’s waist, which most definitely did not have a minute ago. What the fuck do I do now?!  
All of Gamzee is coming back as he whimpers into Eq’s shoulder. His limbs, his chest. Everything. But this time, he is just a little bit more…there. I would not mistake this Gamzee for a simple trick of the eye if I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I would think there was a living person behind me.  
He curls into Equius.  
“Aw, they’re hugging.” Nepeta comes over with Ahab glued to her side “How cute. Makes me wanna heave because the guy killed me, though.”   
She pads over to Gamzee and Equius and pats Gamzee somewhat awkwardly on the shoulder.  
“Buck up, Gamzee.” she says “You’re not so bad when you’re all sad like this. I figure you’ve got an eensy chance at redemption as long as you keep crying over what you’ve done. Fucking hypocrite.”  
“Nepeta.” mutters Eq.  
“What? I’ve got a right to still be mad at him. He killed me and tormented me for like eighteen years. I’ll forgive him when he says-”  
“I’m so fucking sorry,” gasps Gamzee “I’m sorry.”  
Nepeta bites her lip “That. And proves it.”  
But she stoops and hugs him anyway, curling around his back like a cat slouched in a sunbeam.  
“I’m so sorry. I just…I’m sorry.”   
Gamzee repeats it over and over again, rocking slightly.  
I retreat to Rose, unsure of what to do.  
“He’s sorry.” I say to her “And apparently that makes everything better.”  
“Sucks, doesn’t it? If you touch these bones I’ll throw you into the river by the way.”  
The ghosts hold each other for a little while.  
They are the brightest and the most real I have ever seen any of them as they huddle together and I can’t help but feel there is a resolution, an end to this nightmare in sight.


	37. All that remains

When the white light fills the clearing, I’ve barely had the time to take a breath.  
Rose gasps and bolts upright, heedless of her pain, an grabs my arm.  
“What the hell?” shouts Sol, wrapping an arm around Mituna.  
I throw up my free arm to block the light. It fills my vision, toasting my retinas. Ahab barks furiously and throws herself into my side. This time, she actually manages not to drift straight through me. She burrows into my side, whimpering the way she used to as a puppy when one of us was about to leave the house.  
“Eridan,” whispers Rose “What is it? Is it God?”  
Out of force of habit, I scoff at her “God’s a fairy-tale cooked up to turn the masses into obedient sheep.”  
She has never been offended no matter how many times I have told her this, even though she has something of a religion. She knows I don’t believe myself when I say things like that with such conviction.  
The intensity of the light has lessened somewhat. Taking a deep breath, I peer through my fingers at the source. Burning gently over our heads, centred right over the bridge, is something that I can only describe as a little sun. The colour of its light is that same sheer white you see when you glance at the sun at noon. Tendrils of reddish energy swirl around it like probing tentacles. A hot, dry wind that smells of sand and flowers whips past us, scorching my skin. Either Rose or Ahab whimpers, and they both draw closer into my side.  
“Sollux!” I call “Are you alright?”  
“What is it?”  
I see him moving cautiously across the clearing to my side. The ghosts are staring at it with the same confusion and fear. Equius shelters the other two under his arms like a hawk mantling over its food. Even Gamzee is scared, too scared to look at it, from the way he has his eyes trained stubbornly on the floor.  
Nepeta is in awe “It’s beautiful.”  
“No it’s not.” retorts Eq.  
“Eq, I think it’s God. The afterlife. Whatever.”  
He bites his bottom lip “Looks like a tiny star to me.”  
Sol comes to my side and wraps an arm around Rose’s shoulder “Are you guys alright?”  
I nod and Rose swears.  
He grins at me “Mituna’s alright, Eridan. You knew that, right? Don’t worry I’m not holding it against you…I just…”  
He leans over the top of Rose’s head and kisses me. I forget about the little sun boiling over our heads and the dead people and even Rose between for as long as we are kissing, and the fear seems muted even as it comes back in a rush when he pulls away.   
“Priorities, Sol.” I return the smile “Tiny sun first, flirting with Eridan second.”  
I almost referred to myself as ‘your boyfriend’. Close call.  
“Eridan?”  
“I’m fine.”  
Equius straightens up cautiously. Nepeta follows, but Gamzee stays put on the ground, his arms sliding limply from around Eq. Eq walks backwards towards me, keeping his eyes trained on the sun. Even he has to squint to look at it, although it’s not possible to damage any part of him anymore. The sheets of rain have taken on a ghostly, golden glow, like sparks flying from fireworks in the strange lighting.  
My heart dashes itself against my ribs the way it did when Sol and I were in the graveyard. This time, it’s not so much that I’m afraid, it’s just that I know what’s going to happen.  
I shrug off Sol, Rose and Ahab, reaching for Eq.  
“Stay close.”   
He nods.  
Mituna strolls over to the bridge and stands directly underneath the spinning ball of sun-coloured energy. Shielding his eyes, his squints up at with mild interest.  
“This is our ride, darlings.”  
Sol’s face pales “Hey!” he calls “Wait a minute! Where do you get off leaving when I just was able to see you?!”  
Mituna turns around and grins at him, his hands jammed in his pocket “Ah shut up Solly, I’m dead already.” he shows him one of his hands, which has begun to disappear “See this? This is the void getting sick of my dodging my date with destiny. I’ll be wiped out of existence if I don’t get to the other side soon.”  
I swallow hard, glancing at Nepeta. Catching my eye, she looks at the leg which was disappearing. It is making steady progress down her leg, towards her foot. I can’t tell you how weird it is to see a little foot attached to a shoe, but with an empty jean sleeve connected to it.  
“Shit, I’m almost gone! Come on Eq, time’s a wasting.” she slaps Eq on the back and sprints to join Mituna on the bridge.  
Standing on that, they are so close they could reach out and touch the light if they rolled up onto the tops of their feet. Every now and then, the bridge shudders. The water is so rough it slaps into the side of the bridge and washes over its surface, threatening to wash it away completely. With the amount of riverbank it has already eaten away, I’m surprised the little patches where the bridge touches down are still in place at all.  
“Get up, Gamzee.” says Equius “We have to go.”  
An icy feeling washes over me, almost like the first time I felt Eq’s eyes on the back of my neck. I tighten my grip on him, aware that I would be hurting him if he could still hurt.  
“Equius….”  
He turns back to me “I know. It’s not…it’s not fair.”  
It takes some serious effort to keep my upper lip from trembling “I suppose I should throw your bones into the river.”  
He smiles drily “Wait until I’m inside that…that thing, right there.” he tugs the necklace out from under my shirt by its cord “But do me a favour…would you keep this? I mean, if you’re comfortable with wearing it, would you mind wearing it after this?”  
“You’d need pliers to get it off me.”  
Eq slips off his glasses and presses them into my hand “Here, take these too. I’m not sure if these will stay after I’m gone, but you might as well have them. I don’t need them anymore.”  
“What the fuck are these anyway?” I turn the glasses over in my hands.  
“Prescription sunglasses.” he smiles abashedly “I had the eyesight of an eighty year old alcoholic when I was alive.”  
His eyes are blue. Bluer than the last time I saw them, and not as cold. This time I get the impression that these eyes belonged to a living person; that they looked out a world as the world looked back. The smile has reached his eyes too, which just makes mine water and sting even more.   
“It…it happened so fast,” I’m having a hard time speaking around the lump in my throat “I mean one minute I’m dissolving Gamzee, then you’re here and he’s grown back and now you’re all leaving. What the fuck happened?”  
“Busy morning.”  
Our foreheads knock together as we laugh. I freeze there, keeping my forehead against his, not caring that Sol and the rest are all watching us intently.   
“So I guess the traffic jam is over. The bus has arrived.” I say.  
“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.” he’s still laughing a little bit.  
It’s all I can do not to burst into tears and snot all over him “If you were alive, and if you went to my school do you think we would have been friends?”  
“I hope so.” he pauses “But….but I think this was a random stroke of good luck.”  
He’s right.  
If we went to the same school at the same time, he would have Nepeta. I might be recovering from Feferi, but I would do so in the sanctuary Karkat and Dave and Sol provided. To call it a stretch at best would be a lie, to think of my associating myself with someone like the person he was. Tall, probably athletic, too quiet for his own good and mostly expressionless. He would be the kind of person I would mock in front of his friends.  
I never would have been able to love him as much as I do now if he hadn’t been killed, bound up in a jacket and stuffed into the side of my wall.  
I never would have known him at all.  
“Equius!” come’s Nepeta’s voice “I’ve sorta got no legs! Grab Gamzee and let’s go!”  
Reluctantly, he peels away from me. It is like Atlas straightening up from underneath the sky. Equius lets go of me and I let go of him. Every ounce of willpower in my body goes into not grabbing him and holding him back.  
“Behave yourself,” his smile wavers, and I’m afraid one of us is going to burst into tears if he waits too much longer “And goodbye to the rest of you.”  
Sol and Rose wave to him good naturedly.  
“Remember to write.” says Rose, only slightly sarcastically.  
“Stick with them Mituna, ok? I don’t want you wandering around death on your own.” says Sol “Eq and Nepeta will take care of you. Gamzee too, I guess.”  
“Gamzee’s stayin’ put.” says Gamzee.  
So far he hasn’t even looked directly at the light. Instead, he cowers underneath it, his arms folded tightly across his chest. He has pulled his hood up again.  
Eq looks at him “Gamzee…”  
“Nah, bro. I’m’a stay here a while longer.” growls Gamzee through gritted teeth “I’ll be seeing y’all.”  
Eq puts a hand on his shoulder, but Gamzee still will not face him.   
Sighing, Eq flicks the hood from Gamzee’s head and ruffles his hair in an almost fatherly way.  
“That had better be a promise.”  
He walks along the sagging riverbank to the bridge, pausing at the base of it.  
One last look at me. Our eyes lock. I’m going to be seeing his blue eyes behind my lids, every time I close my eyes for the rest of my life.  
I stretch my arm out behind me “Give me the backpack, please, Sol.”   
He presses the strap into my hand. I put Eq’s glasses into my pocket and approach the riverbank.  
What would happen if I ran into the light with them? Where would I go? Would whoever governs these things let me go with Equius and the others, or would they send me back to Sol and the others, or to another place entirely that I can’t even imagine with my limited experience of life and the dead when they come together?  
I let the bag hang over the churning water.  
Equius has linked his arm through Nepeta’s.   
“I really like your dog,” says Nepeta, grinning wolfishly at me “And I loved swimming with you. You’re not the raging asshole I thought you were going to be.”  
I nod mutely to her.  
Mituna has this sneaky look on his face “Hey Eridan, would you mind cleaning up my room for me? I mean, you’re probably going to be spending a lot of time with Sol and around the house. This is my bargain. If I’m gonna let you romance my little brother, you have to organise my room for me, alright? Just don’t let the old man know.”  
Sol scoffs “The old man doesn’t care, Tuna.”  
Mituna’s grin only grows “Didn’t think he would.”  
He is the first to go. He simply raises his arms as if to embrace the light and the tendrils of energy contract towards him, as if to reciprocate the hug, and he shuts his eyes and cries out one last time: “I love you, Sol!” then he is gone.  
Nepeta follows him. She kisses Eq on the cheek, saying something to him with a blinding smile that I don’t catch, then she lifts her arms and is gone too. Equius is left alone on the bridge.  
I let the bones splash into the water. The backpack falls, spraying me, and sinks immediately.   
He looks at me.  
Not his murderer or the others.  
Only me.  
“Thank you for everything.”   
And he is gone.

 

 

The bone at my neck is cold, but this time because of the rain. It is no longer as heavy as I thought it was before. It’s like it’s made of soap bubbles and sea foam, now.  
The portal shrinks gradually. Gamzee shivers as the portal grows smaller and smaller and the tendrils of energy shoot back into the portal like a flower blooming in reverse. I can only watch in shock as the light folds in on itself and fades, wonder if that is what the final death will look like for me. If so, it’s more weird and beautiful and fantastic than anything I could have ever hoped for, let alone conjured up in my imagination.  
All at once, the light and the heat it threw off are sucked back in. The light folds in on itself, becoming a diamond slit in shape. The hole seals with a delicate hiss.  
The silence is absolute. Not even the rain makes any sound. My pulse stills and my breath quiets. This must be what death sounds like.  
Then Sol coughs.  
“Wow.” he waves a hand in front of his face “What now?”  
“Redemption.” Gamzee thinks he is talking to him “The kitty bitch yabbered somethin’ ‘bout this wicked motherfucker gettin’ to purifyin’ and lightenin’ his soul of all his heinous sins. I reckon that sounds like a fair adventure ‘ta me.”  
It amazes me how quickly Gamzee has collapsed from the stuff of nightmares to this shivering, red-eyed wreck. Looking at him now, I can actually believe he’s only a kid with crippling mental illness problems and probably a few drug addictions on the side-line. Still, it’s going to be a very long time before I can summon any feeling but disgust for Gamzee.  
“W-w-w-w….where do you think you’ll go? Just w-wander around the country, lookin’ for good deeds to do?” my lip curls “Travelling healer ghost. Seen that a couple times on ‘Supernatural’.”  
He stands up shakily, keeping his head down “Ain’t nothin’ here for me…not in this place, no more, now that the others are gone. S’my fault they’re gone, ‘course…”  
Surprising us all, Ahab trots over to his side and licks his knee. She flashes him her best doggy grin, which I know to mean ‘pet me, human’ and butts her head gently into his legs.  
Gamzee’s frown slips “I’m real sorry ‘bout what I did to you too, puppy. Yer name’s…Ahab, ain’t it?”  
“Captain Ahab.” I correct him “Because she’s always in pursuit of that notorious white whale of the best place to sit on the couch.” suddenly, I am practically bowled over by a rush of generosity I’m sure I’ll regret later. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop myself “Why don’t you take her with you?”  
Sol and Rose give me strange looks. I bristle and blush.  
“What? It’s not like I can take care of a ghost dog! I’m still tryin’ to figure out w-w-what to tell Pa about the dog dyin’ while he was tryin’ to die in hospital, alright? She’s not gonna like wanderin’ around our big old house, bein’ ignored and neglected ‘cos I’m the only one w-w-who can see her. Please, get her outta my hair. You’d be doin’ me a favour. Plus, you ow-we me one for killin’ her in the first place.”  
Gamzee is stunned. He scrambles for something to say, perhaps an appropriately grovelling apology, and ends up with : “She gettin’ her chase on for sticks?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Then we got somethin’ in common.”  
The dog woofs in agreement.  
Gamzee squares his shoulders and turns his back to us, ready to leave. I toss the bag at him and enjoy the sound of it thumping into his back. He catches it by pressing his arm to his back against it, bringing it around to the front. He plunges his hand in and pulls out a handful of teeth, finger bones, a fragment of skull and a single rib I must have missed.  
“Sorry I dumped most of you in the river.” I can feel another flush creeping up my neck “Didn’t know what else to do. I mean, I guess you’re fine now ‘cos you said sorry or w-whatever, but it can’t hurt to hang onto those just in case.”  
“You’re friggin’ weird.” Says Gamzee with a hint of glee “Extremely frigging weird, rare bird, Eridan Ampora.”  
I glower at him “No more murdering. From now on, you help people, got it? Kill abusive parents and rapists, and finish people’s math homework while they sleep, and help old ladies cross the street, and find missing rings and keys, and tell the people who can see you that they’re not weird until Nepeta and Eq are ready to forgive you. They’ll come and get you, I’m sure.”  
He regards me quietly. His eyes spark with a faint, but growing, humour that definitely wasn’t there before.  
“Happy ending.” he mutters somewhat bitterly.  
He turns his back to me and melts into the shadows. Ahab barks at me, her tongue lolling around, her grin full and wide, then she follows her new best friend into the forest.   
It turns out dogs don’t look back when they leave behind their old lives.  
“We had better go.” says Rose “I don’t know where I’ve been or for how long, but I’m sure my mother has sobered up enough to notice the distinct lack of Rose in the house. She may even be flipping her shit as we speak. Could one of you drive me home?”  
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I motion for them to wait and answer it with butterflies in my stomach.  
“Shouldn’t you be on my sickbed?” yawns Pa.  
Tears flow freely from my eyes. Covering the phone’s speakers, I say to the others “You guys are going to have to drop me off at the hospital on the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I have to say- I know this isn't the last chapter, but I want to say goodbye to Equius here. As strange as that may sound. I've really enjoyed writing his character, although the scenarios were limited and his characterisation was never the best. I enjoyed having him packed into that little bone (an idea from 'Anya's Ghost', the graphic novel that inspired me to write this, as I mentioned at the start) and having him literally stuck with Eridan.   
> I'm going to miss writing Nepeta and Gamzee as well. Basically, all the ghosts.   
> Goodbye to all of them undeads, I guess, from A to Ahab to Z for Zahhak.  
> It's been a pleasure to write you.  
> One more chapter to go.


	38. The end (or, all that remains to tell)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recommend listening to 'Little ghosts' by the White Stripes while reading this.  
> It's the song that got me through these 37 chapters.

Cronus comes home two days later.  
By that time, Pa has come to terms with the fact that Ahab is gone and has slathered a good portion of the neighbourhood with missing posters. Cronus is surprised to see how Pa is bouncing around like a spring lamb and berates him for giving us all such a scare. The doctors are still investigating as to why he slept for so long. Some of them fear a new cancer, and other think a brain problem is in sight in the future. Doc Scratch remains optimistic. The first thing he did when he saw me coming back to pick up Pa was to wish me a happy birthday.  
When Cronus comes home, Pa makes that day officially my eighteens birthday, claiming the other one didn’t count because he was unconscious like an asshole when it happened. On the actual day, he actually chased me out of the house with a water gun, to John’s place, with a surprising amount of energy for somebody who had been comatose for nearly three days.  
True to his word, John had baked me an amazing cake. The others didn’t press me for details, but when Rose and Sol showed up later and Sol kissed me on the cheek, they literally cheered. Karkat jumped up in his chair and cracked our heads together, shouting at us for taking so long to consummate a hate/love romance that was so obvious to the general public it was physically painful to observe.  
On the first night, I can’t sleep. I end up calling Sol around ten, after Pa has gone to bed, and he sneaks into the house via the back door around ten twenty. I spend the night of my birthday the same way I spent the morning of my birthday, although I am much quieter this time for fear of waking up Pa. Sol stays until the early morning. Neither of us are able to sleep a wink, so we are content to lie together. I curl into his chest and let the rest of the world melt away.  
Eq’s bone stays on my nightstand. Again, I couldn’t quite bring myself to get down to business with Sol with the bone that was his home still around my neck. I’m sure it’s going to stay that way far into the future.  
On the second night, the glasses disappear. They had been living in my jacket pocket, getting prodded every few minutes as I reached in to confirm they were still there. At night, they sat on the nightstand with the pendant, which I took off in the shower and while I slept for fear of damaging the bone. I want to cry when I wake up and realise they are not there. I really do, but I am comforted by the fact that the bone has stayed. Since Pa is determined to go into work that day, I skip school again and spend the day at Sol’s house while his father is out at work too, cleaning up Mituna’s room.  
It’s a godawful mess, as expected. The extent of the mess? Kind of unprecedented, actually, but we manage to make a good dent in the mess.  
Cronus comes home the next day and there is a lot of fondling of the hair and demanding to know how I got so tall and quizzing Pa about his general health. That night, he sneaks out of the house around midnight. He stumbles back home at seven o’clock in the morning. At the time, only I am awake.  
“What happened to you?” I laugh at him.  
His eyes are bright, but his face is ashen and tired. Clearly, he hasn’t slept a wink, wherever he went.  
He throws himself down on the couch and stares at the ceiling, heaving a great sigh.  
“Hey, Eri?”  
“What?”  
“You heard about the grave-robbers?”  
“What grave robbers?”  
“Somebody snuck into a graveyard and stole some bones out of a coffin. They left the coffin sitting right out there in the rain.”  
“Some people are fuckin’ creeps.”  
“I know, right? You know Mituna has a grave out there, Mituna Captor? I didn’t know this, but apparently Sollux paid for it himself without telling their father. He still doesn’t know, so breathe not a word to Mr Captor.”  
He closes his eyes. There’s a little smile in the corner of his lip.  
“How long were you out there?” I ask carefully “At Mituna’s grave?”  
“Not the whole night. Kankri just wanted to see it.”  
When the time comes for him to go back to the university, Kankri will go with him.  
In fact, Kankri turns up at the house a lot in the following days with Karkat in tow as a convenient excuse. Pa is stuck between being stunned and delighted that his hopeless boys apparently both landed boyfriends in basically the same week. He hardly knows which one of us to embarrass first, but I do notice a lot more of my baby photos are appearing around the house than of Cronus’s.  
When a week and a half has gone by and Cronus is due to go back in one more week, he tells us another of his university friends is coming to town. He explains how this guy used to live in this town, but his family moved out a long time ago. I fail to pick up on the flicker of discomfort when he mentions the fact that they moved out, because I’m concentrating on the fact that Kankri has his hand on Cronus’s knee when he tells us the news. Karkat kicks me under the dinner table for staring.  
I offer to drive Cronus the next day, as he has forgotten the way to the airport and Pa still has a lot of work to catch up on after his ‘sickness’.  
Cronus doesn’t talk about the guy on the way over. I don’t ask. In my mind, I have him pegged as a giant of a sweaty jock with cropped hair and a honking laugh, the kind of person I’ll want to slug in the face the first time I clap eyes on him. I wait in the car while Cronus retrieves him from arrivals.  
Before he goes, he throws the first and final warning at me “Don’t ask him why he’s here, alright? He’s come to sort through some family business and track down some people. Just…something really bad happened to his family here. They lost somebody and no one in the town talks about it. This big, high-up in the police was related to the guy they think did this…this awful thing, so he swept it all under the rug, somehow. Yakuza or something. Just avoid the subject unless he broaches it, then be really, really polite and vague.”  
Then he runs off, leaving me in a fuzz of confusion.  
It couldn’t be, could it? The same thought runs through my head again and again. The wait is an agony. When I hear Cronus’s voice outside the car, I slip the bone under my shirt.  
As they’re putting the guy’s luggage in the back of the car, I take deep, measured breaths and chide myself for getting myself all worked up. The guy slides into the backseat. I turn around to shake his hand and offer the other appropriately awkward greetings.  
The first thing I notice are his eyes. Extremely, painfully blue. His hair is long, smooth and black, bound up in a ponytail. He’s Asian in some way, perhaps Iranian or Turkish.  
Cronus gets into the shotgun seat “This is my roommate. We call him Ponytail, on account of his hair.”  
He gives me a shy smile “Please, don’t call me that. My name is Horuss Zahhak. You must be Eridan?”  
I just about manage not to squawk “Yeah, that’s me. Heard a lot about you.” I shake his hand, expecting him to be freezing.  
He’s not. This one is alive. I wait for the bone to turn to ice under my shirt, but nothing happens.  
This is when it hits me. No matter what happens from this point on, Equius is never coming back. His life and his death can be changed in this world, but he has moved onto the next and the only chance of him ever coming back is if Gamzee gathers enough good-will on his quest for redemption with my dead dog, to pick him up and take him away too.  
His brother may be in the backseat, but the bone around my necklace is really all that remains of Equius Zahhak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it.  
> That's a wrap people. Thanks for reading this far. I know I've enjoyed writing this and reading all of the comments that have come in - it came kind of as a surprise that so many people enjoyed this so violently, and an unexpected pleasure too. So thank you guys too for giving me the inspiration to keep going on this when I needed it, even though I knew it was far from my best work.  
> So yeah.  
> A little bonus: when this story was originally in the works, I thought I might end the story so that the epilogue finds Sol and Eridan at prom (together of course), and that Eq comes out of nowhere to dance the last dance with Eridan, leaving everyone to ask 'Who the heck was that?" and "Looked like Cinderella with a ponytail and Middle Eastern heritage" and "How did he even get in here in jeans and a hoodie?" but it was too cheesy. Fondue pot cheesy, so we got the sadder, less satisfying ending here.  
> BUT  
> It's all said and done now, so yeah.  
> Thanks very much, once again. Hope to see you guys some time again drifting around this site.
> 
>  
> 
> (It has been a month since I finished what has so far been my most read story. Just thought I might as well let the audience know, although most of the old readers, and there was a devoted little chapter there for a while, that this is going to be made into an original story at some point.  
> I liked the concept of this fic so much I'll be turning it into a more complex story with original characters, assuming I ever have a sustainable writing career. At some point, somebody might see this published and go 'hey aint that the thing that weirdo on AO3 wrote like fifty years ago)  
> (Just so you know, no, it wasn't stolen, it was just re-made.)  
> (I love Homestuck and I love the start it has given me as a writer, and all the material. I figured one of the ways I can honor such a masterpiece of satire is by using an idea the Huss himself once inspired. )  
> (Long live John)


End file.
